Whoever you are, scanning these lines, you have secrets — experiences, facts about yourself and opinions you would never share openly with other humans.
But what if you could share your secrets with a complete stranger? Countless people already have, with a stranger by the name of Frank Warren. Warren is the founder of PostSecret — a community art project that allows anyone from anywhere to send him an anonymous postcard displaying a personal secret. For many, part of the project’s appeal lies in its anonymity and the lack of a previous connection with Warren.
“I guess [what makes PostSecret unique] is the fact that people trust him so much ... that they would share their secrets with a stranger,” fourth-year College student Vennesa Yung said.
Warren visited the University Oct. 7 to share the story and meaning behind PostSecret to a packed audience and camera crew from “The Today Show” in Old Cabell Hall. His introduction? “Hi. My name is Frank, and I collect secrets.”
The project started small, Warren told the audience. In 2004, he began handing strangers in Washington, D.C. blank postcards addressed to his home in Germantown, Md. bearing the message: “You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project.” The only requirements were that secrets must be true and not previously shared with anyone.
Postcard recipients’ actions varied, he said, though the most common response was, “I don’t have any secrets.” (Those people have the best ones of all, he said.)
Despite initial skepticism toward the project, Warren said postcards slowly began to trickle in. They kept coming as months passed, and the trickle became a stream. Now, four years later, the world drops about 200 of its secrets in his mailbox every day — meaning roughly 1,000 secrets per week. Needless to say, he has stopped handing out postcards. They pour in of their own accord from nearby neighborhoods and overseas countries.
“I had accidentally tapped into something full of mystery and wonder that I didn’t fully understand,” Warren said. “The project took on a life of its own.”
Warren said HarperCollins eventually requested to publish a book with him about the postcards, which was released in 2005. The success of the first book led to three more. PostSecret’s fame even spread to the music industry, when a band named The All-American Rejects featured some of the postcards in the music video for their 2005 hit, “Dirty Little Secret.”
The project’s popularity demonstrates Warren is not alone in his fascination with secrets. But why the fascination? What attracts people to this anonymous exposure of hidden thoughts? Warren explained that secrets are not shared often enough in everyday life, and their repression creates barriers between people and feelings of loneliness and frustration. “Sometimes when we’re keeping a secret, that secret is keeping us ... in ways we don’t recognize ... that affect our lives and others,” he said. When people carry secrets their whole lives, he said, “I think it’s tragic.”
Warren said he began collecting and sharing secrets to foster a sense of community — connections based not on geography but on “minds and hearts.”
Warren, too, has been deeply impacted by the project. He said he feels privileged to receive each secret as “an amazing glimpse through a 6-inch by 4-inch window into someone’s heart,” and noted that each glimpse has further helped him see “the frailty and heroism in so many of our lives that goes on just below the surface.”
Each secret is particularly important as a unique work of art, he added. PostSecret’s loose guidelines encourage creativity. Some secrets venture beyond the postcard form and have arrived at Warren’s house on X-rays, fruits and vegetables, a Rubik’s Cube — even a one-pound bag of coffee, he said.
The secrets vary as widely as the mail that bears them.
“You can see the full range of human emotions in [them],” Warren said — everything from comic jests to deeply troubling burdens. He added that he notices “patterns and trends” within that variety and said many of the secrets deal with “loneliness and eating disorders and self-harm and suicide.”
Warren said he feels particularly strong about using PostSecret to advocate suicide prevention through both the direct sharing of painful secrets and the support of suicide prevention organizations. One of Warren’s friends founded a suicide prevention hotline, and when it fell in desperate need of funds, Warren posted a request on his blog. PostSecret followers answered it with a total of $30,000 for the hotline.
Yung said she was impressed by Warren’s use of the blog community to raise funds for suicide prevention.
“That’s really meaningful,” she said.
But this information was not new to Yung, who said she already had visited Warren’s blog — which he updates every Sunday with about 20 fresh secrets — and has read one of his books. For audience members like Yung, Warren still offered new material by showing a string postcards banned from publication, largely for copyrighting reasons.
“I thought that part was funny,” Yung said.
At the end of his talk, Warren asked listeners to share some of their own secrets live, an invitation he offers at every college he visits. “The Today Show” crew stopped filming and many people stepped forward to speak their secrets into the microphones scattered through the room.
Third-year Commerce student Laura Albero — a member of the University Programs Council’s Arts & Enrichment Committee and the program coordinator for Warren’s talk at the University — said she “was very moved” by some of the secrets unveiled that evening. She added that Warren was very specific about how the room’s lighting should appear for this part.
“He likes to have the house lights come down so it’s a little darker and people are in shadow ... so they’re more comfortable when sharing secrets,” she said.
As program director, Albero spent Oct. 7 showing Warren around Grounds and answering his questions about the University.
“He was really excited about the secret societies and kept asking questions about the Imps and the Zs and the Sevens,” she said.
He may not have discovered much about the societies, but Warren witnessed a great deal of personal secrets revealed that night and said he felt encouraged by the “warm, empathetic way” in which students and community members opened up to each other during the presentation.
When asked about future plans for the PostSecret project, Warren could not say where it was going. To this day he still reads and saves every postcard sent to his home in Maryland, but Warren merely considers himself one of PostSecret’s many followers, rather than its leader. He said he hopes PostSecret inspires future movements that foster community and understanding among people.
“I hope we all have the ability to share our secrets in a way that helps ourselves and others,” he said.
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