A few weeks ago, in one of my university courses we were researching and exploring the blog PostSecret. In short, PostSecret is an online community where people mail in personal secrets on a postcard to Frank Warren (the founder) and he uploads them onto the blog every Sunday. A few colleagues and I shared a presentation on our findings to our classmates about PostSecret.

You will find your answers in the secrets of strangers. – Frank Warren

Elaborating on that quote, our presentation highlighted the key idea that through PostSecret and the act of confession by sending in a postcard provides the individual and the audiences of PostSecret a sense of community. This online network encourages a safe environment for blog followers to discuss and share their reactions or thoughts on the secrets.

With this community and act of anonymous confession can relieve a sense of burden through this blog by having individuals share a connection with the secrets posted by relating to or empathizing with them. For me, and my immediate friends we can relate to these secrets given our shared circumstances:

I chose these secrets to share because of how relative they are to us (us as in my readership, my fellow university students). It is through reading these secrets we can feel a connection to the anonymous writer and to the others who share similar outlooks.

We can see how these acts of anonymous confession in a public realm can bring people together. On a more local scale, the school I attend – University of British Columbia – has also established their own confessional site “UBC Confessions” which offers a similar service to PostSecret but created through Facebook. UBC Confessions allows students to anonymously email in their secrets, and the Facebook page administration monitors and posts the secrets to the public page.

Although many of the confessions can be humorous or vulgar, we must recognize that a lot of the posts are intended for a university audience of young adults. However, there are some posts that are relevant to us…

“All my life people have called me smart because I get good grades. However, being academically successful is all that I am because I have absolutely no practical or social skills. I base my self-worth on my ability to get high marks and If I didn’t have them to validate my intelligence I’d probably have a nervous breakdown.”

• “Dear fellow arts students,

• As a student of philosophy, I find that the highest grades that I receive are, naturally, in philosophy. This generally ranges from A- to A+ although the latter are more rare. As this is anonymous, and thus doesn’t reflect back on me, I don’t intend to boast. So, enough background information and let’s move on to why I’m really making this post…”

• “Does anyone actually have their sh*t together because I am so lost.”

A lot of the time, when confessions like these are posted, I know for myself that I can relate. Since I can relate to these specific secrets, I feel that I am not alone with how I feel, and that there are many others who feel the same. As mentioned earlier, this is how “community” is established.

Within our own district of UBC, we have established our own confessional page for students just like us to share our secrets and find our answers. What is significant about this specific Facebook page is how it is catered to us, UBC students. We all have a shared commonality that we are students of the same institution, but more importantly sometimes we can relate to the confessions being posted. Unlike PostSecret where it is a blog open to the entire public, UBC confession limits its readership to the UBC population. This smaller setting secures the sense of our local community because we are posting and sharing amongst our own people. It is through this act of anonymous confession and this sense of community that can relieve some of the stress we burden.