PostSecret: confessions of an international phenomenon

Right now, in a quiet, suburban home in Germantown, Md., one man holds the world’s secrets. He’s not hired by the FBI or a peeping neighbor; he’s a husband and small business owner who receives hundreds of secrets in his mailbox daily.

Frank Warren, 42, had an idea for a community art project in November 2004. He took 3,000 self-addressed postcards with instructions of the project and passed them out at Metro stations, art galleries, bookstores and hid them between the pages of public library books.

The rules were simple: the secret must be true, and it had to be something never told to anyone before.

The postcards began to trickle in, and Warren had enough to present his project at Artomatic, an arts festival held in Washington, D.C.

However, the trickle of secret postcards never stopped. It became more of a steady flow and then in strength and size similar to a tidal wave.

“You can never get too much mail,” Warren said in a telephone interview. He says his mailwoman does not hate him, but there are a few employees of the postal service cursing his name.

As the postcards kept pouring in, Warren created a Web site, PostSecret.com, which is now one of the world’s top 10 blogs, according to Technorati, a Web service tracking thousands of blogs.

The secrets are sent in from around the world and deal with the pains and joys of growing up, family, religion, sex, loneliness, love, inspiration, desperation and. Well, the list is endless. These postcards are illustrations of real experiences, and they are a tiny glimpse into people’s innermost thoughts, fears and secret desires.

“A lot of other blogs are just writing, but this is a more creative way to show how people are feeling,” said Jenni Jones, a junior nursing student. “It gives me an inside to other people’s lives. I like to see if I carry the same secrets. I always look at it on Sunday.”

Warren’s idea for the project was his realization of individuals hiding secrets from not only others, but from themselves as well.

“It takes a lot of courage to share a secret,” Warren said. “It’s powerful that so many people can share so much of themselves with a stranger and with themselves. It helps them, and it helps others.”

Warren believes strongly in protecting his project. He continuously turns down sizable monetary offers of people asking to advertise on his Web site. “If I wanted to turn PostSecret into a profit-making venture, I could easily do that by putting advertising on it, but I want to protect its integrity.”

PostSecret.com certainly has the numbers that advertisers yearn for. Three million visitors a month and around 200,000 page uploads every Sunday, the day the Web site is updated with new secrets.

However, PostSecret.com has made a slight income. In the All-American Rejects music video, “Dirty Little Secret,” the postcards featured both held up and covering the wall behind the band were all from PostSecret.

However, instead of being paid royalties for the postcards, Warren asked for a $2,000 donation to Hopeline, a suicide prevention charity where Warren is a veteran volunteer of three years. Throughout all of PostSecret’s work since its creation, it has raised $30,000 for Hopeline.

With the Web site off and running – or, rather, soaring – Warren decided to take the project down another avenue.

“Postsecret: Extraordinary Confessions From Ordinary Lives” was released November 29, 2005, in bookstores, and the book began selling in shocking numbers. The book ranks 40th in Amazon’s book sales. Also, The Observer in the U.K. publishes one postcard every Sunday in their newspaper.

What began as a simple art community project has Warren traveling all over the world speaking about these postcards or “graphic haiku” as he calls them.

Warren will release the next PostSecret book, “My Secret,” on Oct. 24. He said the newest book will feature “never-before-seen secrets from young people, from high school to college.”

From PostSecret.com
Create your 4-by-6-inch postcards out of any mailable material. If you want to share two or more secrets, use multiple postcards. Put your complete secret and image on one side of the postcard.

Tips
Be brief – the fewer words used the better.
Be legible – use big, clear and bold lettering.
Be creative – let the postcard be your canvas.

Mail your secrets, or other correspondence, to:
PostSecret
13345 Copper Ridge Road
Germantown, MD
USA 20874-3454