Post Secret

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

PostSecret began as an art installation for Artomatic 2004 in Washington, D.C.

The simple concept of the project was that completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they had never previously revealed. No restrictions were (or are) made on the content of the secret; only that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before. Entries range from admissions of sexual misconduct and criminal activity to confessions of secret desires, embarrassing habits, hopes and dreams.

Since Frank Warren created the website on January 1, 2005, PostSecret has collected and displayed upwards of 2,500 original pieces of art from people across the United States and around the world.

The site, which started as an experiment on Blogspot, is updated every Sunday with approximately 20 new pieces which share a relatively constant style, giving all "artists" who participate some guidelines on how their secrets should be represented.

From June 24 to July 3, 2007, the "Comments" section of the site was enabled. While a comments feature is frequently present on blogs, it had been previously absent from the PostSecret site. Many visitors viewed the presence of a comments section as out of character for the site, which was previously distinguished as a non-judgmental space for participants to reveal personal secrets. Many visitors felt that the new section contradicted the purpose of the site, as evidenced in numerous comments criticizing a postcard in which the author claims to have fed bleach to his/her cat.

In October 2007, the PostSecret Community was launched (www.postsecretcommunity.com). Since its inception, more than 39,000 people have registered for the online discussion forum. Questions have been raised about how the forum affects the anonymity of the PostSecret project, but for those involved on the Community board, there seems to be a positive response of people who haven't sent in a postcard or haven't seen their secret on the site sharing their secrets with other PostSecret fans.

According to Youth Trends' February 2008 "Top Ten List Report" PostSecret was the 10th most popular site amongst female students in the USA, with 7% of those polled naming the site as their favorite.