New age of Confessional Media

 

For most of us, the idea of sharing the intimacies of our life with a stranger would be anathema. Yet more and more young people are feeling compelled to reveal their secrets to everyone on the world wide web.

Let me introduce you to PostSecret. PostSecret, is an ongoing Community Mail Art project, created by Frank Warren, in which people mail their secrets anonymously on a homemade postcard. Select secrets are then posted on the PostSecret website, or used for PostSecret’s books or museum exhibits.

 

The concept of the project was that completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they had never previously revealed. No restrictions 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.The secrets are meant to be empowering both to the author and to those who read it.

 

Now, from sending post cards, people are starting their own online blogs and blogging out confessions and secrets, without revealing their identity of course (some actually would). However, Why do they do it? And what are the private costs of putting up their secrets online?

 

Because of technology, the world has been made smaller. But the constant use of social networks and online platforms seems to have made us lonelier. It is ironic but it’s something that’s been going on for awhile now. Everyone’s always on their phones, we rather text than have decent conversations.

 

And I suppose this is the reason why so many people are turning to confessional media platforms like Postsecrets to tell their secrets to. Also, many people uses the computer as a privacy screen. Tell your secrets but no one will know who you are.

 

Confessional media is slowly on the rise, people are turning to blogs and strangers to post their confessions. It is an outlet for most, because most of us tend to keep our feelings in. This alarming trend is most definitely something for us to think about.