Post Secret

I want to call out a particular website to your attention. It is on my list of Links, but it deserves *special* recognition. The website is http://postsecret.blogspot.com/.

I've made it a habit to read this site, usually every Monday, as new posts are put up on Sundays. In short, it is a collection of people's secrets that they create on postcards and mail to a guy named Frank, who posts them on his site.

The secrets vary in topic as well as the emotions that they ellicit - boring, benign, grotesque, funny, daring, saddening, inspiring, you get the point. Part of the appeal is just that - that the secrets range the whole spectrum of emotion. It is interesting and compelling to read them and to feel just a tiny bit of all those emotions. Another part of the appeal is purely aesthetic. Many of the postcards are creative and unique; everyone starts tabla rosa; the same 4"x6" canvas; but the end result varies so much.

Perhaps the greatest appeal, to me, is voyeuristic. Though it's not pure voyeurism, since people who send in their secrets know that others will see them, it is a window, behind a computer screen, into other people's lives. And not just their lives, but their secrets.

I haven't mailed anything in, but I wonder what it'd say... and I wonder if you guys have.