PostSecret encourages people to write their secrets down on home-made postcards and send them in. There’s a lot of pain visible on the site. It reminds me of Hearing Aid in John Brunner’s great prescient sci-fi novel The Shockwave Rider. Hearing Aid was based on a computer virus that had been inserted into the national grid (Brunner’s anticipation of the Internet; reading it today, it’s hard to believe that it was written in 1973). In the novel, it’s not called a “virus” but a “worm” or “phage”; its effect was to allow anyone to dial 999999999 from any phone and be connected to a real human being over a totally secure connection. The Hearing Aid listener would simply listen; no judgment was passed, no advice given, no penance assigned or absolution offered; just a human being available to receive a poured out secret.
Here’s one of the less dramatic cards from the PostSecret site:
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