Sharing Secrets on Cyberspace

The premise of this simple, yet influential ongoing community project is to have people anonymously mail in their secrets on 4x6 handmade postcard. Each week, Warren updates his site, featuring a new batch of forbidden secrets. This popular blog has become highly therapeutic, as it is an escape for those with stressed lives, a place where people can share their inner secrets and read others' hidden truths. The secrets are insightful, enlightening, and even scary. But most of all, these postcards touch the heart and makes us realize how alike humans are. At this site, readers find themselves befriending the bloggers as if they understand their circumstances or even hating the bloggers for they deserve no sympathy.

One critic says, the website is "simply beautiful.... to know that there are people in this world brave and vulnerable enough to open their hearts and rip out their innermost thoughts and feelings for the rest of us.

Above all, these artful postcards are captivating. PostSecret.com has quickly become a huge success and even landed on Time's 50 coolest websites of 2005. Moreover, these fascinating postcards are the main focus of The All American Reject's music video, "Dirty Little Secret." With all the buzz, Warren has even compiled some influential postcards in his book entitled PostSecret : Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives and in his more recent collection, My Secret: A PostSecret Book. Also, a PostSecret exhibition, displaying over 2,000 postcards, was held around the country at museums and schools such as Georgetown University and New York University. These postcards describe topics like: regret, hope, funny experience, unseen kindness, fantasy, belief, fear, betrayal, erotic desire, feeling, confession, or childhood humiliation. Warren invites people to "reveal anything - as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before." For example one dark secret, written on a homemade postcard, in a cloud of smoke says: "Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I'm dead."

Every week, countless postcards are mailed to Germantown, Maryland to make a confession. Warren says that theses postcards are living secrets that exist in real time, in a sense of urgency and immediacy. A short video featuring selected postcards called, "PostSecret: The Art and Nature of Secrets" is also available to download on the Internet. Warren believes PostsScret.com is highly effective because it "reaches so many people with an airtight, nonjudgmental environment." Indeed, this blog's power of confession is a fascinating social phenomenon. Healing has become an art.