The Internet has led our society to make large alterations to our perceptions and expectations when it comes to individual privacy. Our addresses are posted, photos of our neighborhood are on Google and the web requires us to reveal everything from our names and social security numbers in order to gain access to Internet shopping and newspaper articles.
One of the latest Internet phenomena on the web is a blog called PostSecret. In 2004, the website's creator, Frank Warren, began leaving postcards in public areas, asking whoever found it to send a secret they had never previously shared. I understand that sometimes when we believe we are keeping a secret, that secret is actually keeping us,\ says Warren in the introduction to his recently published book, a collection of postcards from the website.
Warren says he now receives 500 to 700 secrets from anonymous senders all over the world every week and the site receives an estimated 3 million hits per month to view its weekly updates.
The cards are colored and pasted into 4""-by-6"" pieces of unique, individual qualities and quirks. They can stand alone or be assembled into a detailed anatomy of human universality. Some are absurd and light: ""When I get angry, I write bad words on toaster strudel."" Others are desperate and profound: ""I wished on a dandelion for my husband to die.""
The idea of PostSecret pushes the individual to remake him or herself, while also giving him or her the possibility to positively influence others. ""I think the surprise is that there is such a strong artist in so many of us, and I hope that's something that really comes through with the project,"" says Warren.
Contrary to most of our more sedentary Internet tendencies, PostSecret encourages us to be active and introspective about our everyday lives.
""There is something we can do—fill out the postcard. Reading the postcards is also a form of taking action. Something might change. There is hope,"" says Anne C. Fisher in the foreword to the PostSecret book.
Warren keeps every single postcard he receives, even if he can't put all of them on his website. ""There's just a few kinds of secrets that give me pause to post,"" he says. ""Sometimes I get secrets talking about a female rape fantasy, and while I don't doubt the authenticity of the card and the secret, I feel like sometimes people could misinterpret that message if it were on the web."" However, invitations to appear in art galleries and plans to do more books in the future have provided Warren with an opportunity to expand the number of secrets he can select to share and give the public more access to the project.
As his fame has grown from PostSecret's success, Warren still remains ""an accidental artist,"" a father, a business owner and an ordinary man. Warren leaves his e-mail address on the site so surfers can directly respond to his newest post or the project. Messages claim that particular postcards have changed and even saved their lives.
""I left a tiny note in between the pages of each copy of the PostSecret book that [Borders] had in stock,"" one message read. ""They read ‘I hope that this book changes your life. It helped save mine.'""
Warren says his favorite secret hails from one of these e-mails, rather than a postcard. ""My favorite postcard is one I never received. I received an e-mail from somebody who said that they wrote down a secret on a postcard...but they didn't like the way they felt about it, and they decided right then and there to change their life and they tore up that postcard.""
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