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bLink 2

Secret absolution.

Thom Wong 28 Nov 2005TheTyee.ca

Thom Wong writes regularly about music for The Tyee. He has also been a teacher and contract specialist. With eight years of education and three bachelor degree, Thom focuses mostly on marketing writing.
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[Editor's note: 40 bLinks lists Thom Wong's top web picks. For information about him and how he chooses them, click here.]

That crush on your best friend's boyfriend bringing you down - or the fact that you did something about it? Got another secret? Tell the people at PostSecret and they'll absolve you of all your sins, making you shiny and new.

Or at the very least they'll make you more creative: PostSecret requires its would-be pilgrim to send in his or her secret on a handwritten, 4x6 paper card.

The dark and dirty ranges from the mundane ("All the excuses I make for being late are lies"), to the political ("I'm a Democrat but sometimes I listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio"), to the frightening ("They didn't keep me safe/ They knew what he had done before/ And he did it to me").

Reading through the cards is to realize how close we all are in terms of what we want to forget, to release and to forgive. The site, started by Frank Warren as an art project, has become so popular as to warrant a book, PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives. To date, over five million people have checked what other people desperately need to confess.

In its way, the site proves the age-old axiom (or is it just a U2 lyric?) that a secret is only a secret when you tell someone else. One might say that if the Internet is our new place of worship, then PostSecret is the new confession booth. (One might say that, but not me. Nope. Too easy.)

For more information about PostSecret, see the article in The Observer.

Thom Wong is a law student who spends an unreasonable amount of time online. His 40 bLinks column will run every Monday and Thursday on The Tyee.

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