PostSecret, the popular community art project created by Frank Warren, is the opposite of advertising. And that's a damn good thing.
The premise of the project is simple: Warren invites people to write a secret they've never told anybody before on a postcard. Then, people mail the postcard to his home address, 13345 Copper Ridge Road, Germantown, Md. 20874. Every Sunday, Warren picks about 20 secrets and posts them on the PostSecret Web site.
The results are often beautiful. The secrets people choose to share run the gamut of human emotion-from silly to tragic, from hopeful to pained-and if nothing else, the project provides very vibrant proof that, whatever our inner demons and private joys, we are not alone.
One of the more surprising things about PostSecret is that the Web site has no advertisements at all. Warren steadfastly refuses to monetize the PostSecret site with ads, an atypical move considering that the site has received more than 250 million hits since its inception in 2004, according to Warren.
I talked with Warren about this in a phone interview last week as a part of his book tour for the latest PostSecret compilation, "PostSecret: Confessions of Life, Death, and God," which was released last week.
He said that "having never accepted a dollar for a paid advertisement" helps foster a sense of trust between the people sending secrets and himself.
"I think it's a site where commercializing it would have a different feel to it," Warren said. He went on to say that "there's a purity to PostSecret that would be jeopardized by having ads" on the Web site.
He said he thinks our culture is becoming overcommercialized.
"I think the prevalence of commercials everywhere is very concerning, and in some ways, it causes us to shut down what we let in," he said. "…I sometimes feel we aren't as open to the world as we might be, because we've become accustomed to trying to shut out some of those stimuli, because there are so many ads and commercials bombarding us all the time."
The more cynical may dismiss PostSecret as an exercise in self-absorption and narcissism-very creative and sometimes touching navel-gazing, perhaps, but navel-gazing nonetheless. (It's almost as narcissistic as, say, thinking your opinion is worth shoving into newsprint every week.)
And to some degree, they're not wrong. But PostSecret is very much a product of our pervasive media-driven world. It's easy to feel unheard and isolated when countless TV channels and radio stations clamor for attention, and millions upon millions of tweets, status updates and blog entries float around the Internet. It's a cacophony that grows only louder and more soul-deadening when it's laced with pitches from companies trying to convince you that Axe Body Spray will totally get you laid or that using Miracle Whip is an act of badass rebellion. Closing yourself off to all that is understandable, and being closed off from other people because of this is an unfortunate form of collateral cultural damage.
I understand the role advertising plays in our economy, and I'm not interested in challenging the assertion that it is necessary to spur growth or to create an aspirational society. I do believe that some advertising folks hide behind that excuse-"We help the economy chug along! We inform consumers of the things they want!"-to impinge upon culture, desensitize consumers and monetize on people's whims.
I'm convinced that what Frank Warren does is utterly remarkable. He's created a hauntingly moving art project that seems to exist for some reason other than to be a vehicle by which to disseminate ads-an unusual thing in an era of product placement in movies, TV, football games and song lyrics. I just wish it weren't so remarkable.
Joe Dellosa is an advertising senior. His column appears on Tuesdays.
