You may or may not have already heard of PostSecret, but I only just learned of it.

It’s fascinating to me both because of its function and its format. The function isn’t that different from many blogs where people post their secret thoughts, exhibiting them anonymously… some journal communities do this on LiveJournal and elsewhere.

But this place has rules about how things get posted. People have to take the time to make a physical artifact and mail it in. It strikes me as almost religious — an enforced ritual around confession. The artifact created and mailed and then displayed — is it a kind of penance? Does it cleanse? I wonder if the people who make them come back and look at it on occasion once it’s posted, the way they might visit a loved one’s grave?

They range from the humorous to the devastating.