PostSecret

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The initiator of the project, Frank Warren

PostSecret (from Engl. "To post" = send and "Secret" = secret) is an international art project in which people write their secrets on postcards and send them anonymously to the project. Selected maps will be published on the project website and in books. The initiator is the American artist Frank Warren.

background

First shown as a one-off installation at the Artomatic 2004 art exhibition in Washington, DC , it has been continued on the Internet since January 1, 2005.

The process at PostSecret is simple: everyone can design their own postcard, entrusting it with a secret, a longing, a bad habit or the like and send this card to Warren's home address. The secrets sent in range from humorous anecdotes to sexual preferences and criminal activities. The only condition, which of course cannot be checked, is that all submissions must be true and that the sender must never have spoken about this secret.

According to Warren, he receives up to 1,000 postcards every week. The page is updated every Sunday and around 20 new postcards are published. There is no archive of previous publications.

Books

In 2005 the first of four books appeared so far, in which selected secrets are also published outside of the Internet. The proceeds from the sale of the books go to the Hopeline organization , which runs a telephone counseling service for those at risk of suicide . Warren is a volunteer at Hopeline .

Trivia

PostSecret was awarded a total of 5 bloggies in 2006, including a. in the categories Best American Weblog , Best Topical Weblog , Best Community Weblog , Best New Weblog and the main prize Weblog of the Year .

The website postsecret.blogspot.com is, according to its own statement, the largest ad-free blog on the Internet. According to the Internet service Technorati , the site is one of the ten most popular blogs on the Internet.

International sites

There are official international PostSecret sites supported by Frank Warren with postal addresses in the respective country. In October 2007 the French version was put into operation under the name " PostSecretFrance ". In February 2008 a German version followed as PostSecretDeutsch.de with a PO box address in Tübingen . This is operated by a qualified bioinformatician and, according to his own statement, has so far reached more than 1.8 million visitors.

Similar sites

In the meantime, a number of other projects have adopted the basic idea and in some cases varied it. However, none of the pages has so far achieved the popularity and distribution of the original.

literature

  • Frank Warren: PostSecret. Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives. New York, NY: ReganBooks 2005. ISBN 0-06-089919-0
  • Frank Warren: My secret - a PostSecret book. New York, NY: Regan 2006. ISBN 0-06-119668-1
  • Frank Warren: The secret lives of men and women - a PostSecret book. New York: Regan 2007. ISBN 0-06-119875-7
  • Frank Warren: A lifetime of secrets - a PostSecret book. New York: William Morrow 2007. ISBN 0-06-123860-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ PostSecret German in Noah Gottschalk's Handelsblatt , October 29, 2014