The recent (and let’s face, it, rampant) rise of social media has taken our culture of consumerism to an entirely new level. No longer content with the private dialogues offered by texting or instant messaging, we want immediate access to whole communities dedicated to group sharing. We’re literally addicted to information—mundane, profound and everything in between. Even my yoga teacher tweets.
And, thanks to the onslaught of new mobile applications, more and more of us are taking our info to go. Facebook on your iPhone is no different from Facebook on your iBook; if anything, the added mobility increases one’s sense of connectedness. A few weeks ago, while I waited in the doctor’s office for the results of my strep test, it was nice to read words of support from multiple friends…in real time to boot! And it beat the heck out of reading germy, dog-eared back issues of Woman’s Day.
What’s more, those tiny little phone and PDA screens are driving another interesting trend: distillation. Subject matter aside, traditional blogs are full-blown treatises compared to your average Facebook post, not to mention a 140-character tweet. As someone who has spent more years than I’d care to admit studying the perhaps-not-lost art of poetry, I’m understandably interested in the process of honing a message down to its core—revealing distinct artistry and genuine emotion in as few words as possible.
Now, I’m not saying Twitter = Poetry. Anyone following Lindsay Lohan’s mostly pointless, grammar-challenged ponderings would rightly beg to differ. But as with any new genre, there are a few shining stars out there who give the idea of the “shared soundbyte” a glimmer of hope. Take, for example, SMITH magazine’s Six-Word Memoir project. Inspired by a challenge put forth to king-of-curt Ernest Hemingway—write a whole story in just six words—the project continues to cull entries in every medium possible: regular mail, email, blog, Facebook, Twitter and beyond.
Okay, so it’s not surprising that Hemingway knocked it out of the park with this heartbreaking mini-tome: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” But many of SMITH’s Six-Word Memoir entries, from famous writers and everyday folks alike, also hold up under close scrutiny. In fact, the best of these succinct stories were collected into that most old-fashioned of formats, an actual book, “Not Quite What I Was Planning” —which became an instant New York Times Bestseller.
And then there’s the wonderful case of Post Secret. Frank Warren’s art-cum-therapy project was initially a combination of traditional and new media—in 2005, he invited people to reveal their deepest secrets on anonymous post cards, which were then posted weekly on a Blogspot site. The size and format of the cards (along with the suggestion to “use the card as your canvas”) seemed to invite pithy responses, and the project’s confessional overtones informed many of the entries with an incredible gravity. While many fall on the lighter side, like the unexpectedly large number of people who confess to peeing in the shower, others are staggering. One entry says simply, “I have not told my father I have the disease that killed my mother.”
As with Six-Word Memoir (SWM), Warren’s artfully voyeuristic mail has been curated into a series of best-selling books—even as the secrets continue to pour in. Today, you can become a Post Secret Facebook Fan, follow Warren on Twitter or see images of selected cards at postsecret.blogspot.com. If you’re not familiar with the project, consider yourself warned: there’s something addictive about the deeply personal nature of these little missives. Perhaps it’s a question of POV—unlike SWM, most “post secrets” are in first-person and it’s nearly impossible to avoid feeling the writer’s emotion.
Perhaps that’s why, a few years into the project, Warren made the decision to enable comments on the blog. Did this violate the anonymous, non-judgmental nature of the project? A handful of detractors thought it might—particularly for the folks confessing to actual crimes—but as a whole, the comments seem to have added yet another new layer of paint to the picture. What started as a one-way conversation has become a vast community of open-ended support in which readers can now express their understanding (or, in some cases, outrage) at particular secrets.
Warren, recognizing the organic development of something much bigger than his original project, decided to leverage the power of this vibrant, honest community to create world’s first peer-to-peer online crisis center. The result is HopeLine, funded last week by a $100,000 grant from Chase Bank—now currently training nearly 8,000 volunteers to provide professional support to those who were moved by the uniquely accepting vibe of Post Secret to reach out for real help. “Not Quite What I Was Planning” indeed.
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