The Secrets Behind PostSecret

For the greater good of sanity.

Looking back, the reason I started PostSecret was that I was struggling with secrets in my own life at a level beneath my own awareness.

Frank Warren , Germantown, Maryland

Date Posted: 06/20/07

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PostSecret began three years ago as a creative idea for an art show exhibit, which just happened to change Frank Warren's life. With a background in small business, Warren is a self-described, "accidental artist." PostSecret is not a business. He forgoes profit on what is the largest advertisement-free site on the web. The only other link visible on the stark site, which features a weekly list of secrets written on handmade, anonymous postcards from strangers, is for a suicide hotline. The hotline, for which Warren was once a volunteer, nearly went under a year ago and was saved, literally, by PostSecret viewers. In one week, 900 of Warren's visitors contributed a sum total of over $30,000 to the hotline. So what are the secrets behind PostSecret?

I'm in New York right now, doing press for my books. I was just at Stage Deli with my parents. I don't know if you've heard about Stage Deli, but it's a famous deli in the theatre district. They've got the hugest Dagwood sandwiches, the triple decker. Anyway, they've never been to New York before, so I'm having a ball showing them around.

I'll be going back home this weekend. I live in Germantown, Maryland which is where the PostSecret project started. It began at an art exhibition in Washington, DC. For my exhibit, I decided to print out 3,000 one-sided postcards, inviting strangers to share a secret with me; something that was true and something they've never told anyone else before.

I'm not sure how I got the idea to ask people to share secrets anonymously. I think sometimes it's the actions we take that prove to be the most significant of our lives, even though at the time we're doing them, we might not understand the real reason or motives.

So, I handed postcards out anonymously, leaving them between the pages of bookstore books, library books and park benches. Out of that batch I'd say I got about 100 of them back and I posted the anonymous secrets in my exhibit. I thought that was the end of that, but I was wrong.

People began to hand-make their own postcards and the secrets kept coming. Not just from DC, but the idea seemed to spread virally in the real world. I started receiving secrets from people in different states, different continents and different languages. Now I'm getting about 200 postcards a day.

What fueled me to keep the project going after that art show had a lot to do with my own healing process.