“And Life Will Glow”
March 21, 2009
Wrote this for my college’s newspaper. Should come out in two weeks. Enjoy! 
PostSecret was first unveiled as an experimental community art project in October 2004. The founder, Frank Warren, encouraged people to send in their secrets on postcards. He would then post a selection of secrets on his blog every Sunday. Now, more than four years after its creation, PostSecret has been featured in a music video (All American Rejects’ “Dirty Little Secret”), the blog has been rated as the third most popular on the Internet by New York Magazine, there is a traveling art gallery of PostSecrets, a speaking tour featuring Frank Warren, and four books of other people’s secrets have been released, with a new one debuting in October.
The new PostSecret book, entitled Confessions on Life, Death & God, is a book that is eagerly awaited by PostSecret fans as it has been two years since a book by Frank Warren has been released. However, this upcoming book promises to be different, as its subject revolves around faith and religion, something that many PostSecrets touch on every week. Although PostSecret fans are extremely excited at the prospect of a new book, they seem to be undecided as to whether or not they are completely supportive of the subject. The PostSecret community discussion boards are full of arguments regarding how appropriate a PostSecret book regarding faith is. Some fans find it downright offensive and others believe that emphasizing the word God in the book’s title alienates would-be readers and fans. Others, however, are excited at the concept of making faith and religion a focal point of a PostSecret book as they believe that many people all over the world struggle with these subjects.
Some may question the hype. A book? Based off of a website? Of other people’s (sometimes questionable and offensive) secrets? Although some may misunderstand the interest that some fans have as a rude desire to know of others’ problems, fans of the site and books claim that they are drawn into the PostSecret community by the feeling of acceptance and dignity that founder Frank Warren was hoping to create. Many people send in secrets on postcards that they are ashamed of but find a sense of closure in sending in their secret. As chaplain Corey MacPherson stated in a recent chapel service that briefly touched on the subject of PostSecret, people long for redemption, and some people turn to PostSecret for that sense of belonging and confession that they so desire. Although it may be frowned upon by some, this community does bring an intense sense of healing to some. While the founder was hoping that his requests for secrets on postcards would create some sort of a stir, he never dreamed that it would become as popular as it has. According to an interview by Guy Kawasaki on his blog in October 2007, Warren feels that he has simply stumbled upon something great.
Interestingly enough, Confessions on Life, Death & God is not actually finished yet. There is a link on the PostSecret website to another site dedicated to the new book. On this new site, Warren encourages people to send in their secrets regarding, obviously, life, death, and God. In the video on the homepage Warren goes on to encourage any secret to be sent in. “It can be funny, sexual, soulful,” he tells people. “Send in anything as long as it’s true and it’s never been shared with anyone else before.” He acknowledges that sharing a secret with strangers is scary, but that the real impact is made when your secret is seen written down right before your very eyes.
Since PostSecret’s inception in 2004, there have been numerous articles and blog posts written, several fansites dedicated, a smattering of Facebook groups and applications created (of which the two main ones have a combined total of 403,237 members), and Frank Warren has even designed a Twitter page for PostSecret that is frequently updated (which has 30,202 followers), sometimes even with extra secrets not included on the actual PostSecret website.
Many find hope and healing from sharing their secrets in postcard form, even, it seems, the founder himself. As stated on his Twitter homepage on March 21st this year, Warren wrote, “My birthday wish today is that I could send a postcard back in time to my troubled younger self, ‘The shit will pass and life will glow.’”
For more information on PostSecret, look up www.postsecret.blogspot.com and www.postsecretcommunity.com/lifedeathgod. Confessions on Life, Death & God will be released October 6th, 2009.
