Geek Gestalt

PostSecret founder Frank Warren spoke in Walnut Creek, Calif., as part of a tour of an exhibition of many of the most interesting secrets he's received in the four years of the project.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)

WALNUT CREEK, Calif.--There probably aren't very many people in the world who could inspire someone to stand up in front of a crowd of 800 strangers and admit to a World of Warcraft addiction.

It might sound like a joke, but in the case of Frank Warren, the founder and curator of the ongoing PostSecret project, people are always baring their souls to him, either via the privacy of an anonymous postcard or letter, or in the case of his many public speaking engagements, in front of hundreds, or even thousands, of people they've never met before.

For four years, Warren has been collecting the secrets people send him--about a thousand a week, he says--and putting the most interesting of them up on the PostSecret blog, as well as publishing them in a series of best-selling books. A major theme of the project--which has millions of fans around the world--is helping people unmask their personal pain through the simple step of letting the secrets they've held inside out for the first time.

Many of the people in the the sold-out crowd at the Lesher Center here Wednesday night cheered wildly when a 39-year-old woman stood up to admit to her WoW addiction, apparently thinking she was joking. But really, it should have come as no surprise that she was deadly serious.

"My secret really is that online gaming really is an addiction," the woman said, "and it can destroy (families), and I think people should know that."

Over the four years of the PostSecret project, Warren has become what some have called "the most trusted stranger" in the world. And over those years, despite the fact that his project has an extremely altruistic nature--there's no advertising on the blog, even though its 220 million-plus page views would certainly earn a fortune, and the sales of the four best-selling books supports the National Suicide Prevention Hotline--many corporate entities have come to him asking if they could work together.

In almost every case, Warren has said no, regardless of the financial carrots offered him.

Most recently, HBO asked if it could use some of the secrets sent to Warren as part of a marketing campaign for its "Big Love" show about a polygamous family in Utah. But he said no, and since then, HBO has been operating its own site, called "Web of Secrets," where people can anonymously post secrets, which are then sent out via a Twitter feed.

I've been watching that feed for a couple of weeks now, and though many of the secrets that come through every 30 seconds or so express the same kind of pain and anguish and longing and loneliness as the postcards that Warren puts up every Sunday on his blog, and which appear in the books, those that are part of "Web of Secrets" are missing something. They seem kind of fake, and it's hard to believe they're real, even though most of them probably are.

"Have the confidence to be vulnerable"
Warren said he wasn't surprised when I told him that Wednesday night.

"You can't replicate the trust I've been able to engender" over the last four years, Warren said. "As long as I don't screw that up, I don't worry about" other secrets projects.

It probably has something to do with the fact that Warren himself is someone who comes across as trustworthy, and as someone who seems to share the same kinds of pain that most of us feel. And there's no way that entering text into a field on a Web site can replicate the personal expression of writing an emotional secret on a postcard and sending it to a Maryland address where an actual human being--Warren--will get it like he has so many thousands of others.

Photos: PostSecret hits the road

And that's especially true when it comes to helping people feel safe opening up their hearts in front of sold-out auditoriums.

"My mantra is, 'Have the confidence to be vulnerable,'" Warren said. "If I can do that, it gives people in the audience the confidence to be vulnerable."

On stage, Warren comes across as extremely vulnerable, even though he's been giving more or less the same version of his PostSecret talk for quite some time. He's a gentle man, and during his talks, he tells several secrets of his own. He is funny, open, and yes, vulnerable.

A big part of his standard talk is to go through a series of his favorites of the secrets he's received over the years, projecting them on a big screen from his computer. But backstage before getting up in front of the audience, Warren always spends time flipping through a tin full of postcards that he brings with him just in case.

"They're special, and I always carry them with me," Warren said. "They're backups in case something goes wrong" with his Mac during the presentation.

But despite his preparation for Mac meltdown, Warren professed to being an Apple loyalist, and said he had, in fact, just bought two new Macs.

"One of the things I like about Apple," he said in his backstage dressing room before his talk, "is (its products') minimalism."

Listening to the secrets of others
Due to a bit of a snafu, I ended up ticketless for Warren's Wednesday night talk here, and so, after talking to a few people, I wound up sitting in a dark room backstage where I was able to watch him speak on a monitor and listen to him through large speakers set up in the room.

It was strangely disassociative, listening to his words, and then the words of the many people who came up to microphones in the auditorium to share their own secrets. I've seen Warren speak before, and watched as a couple of dozen people stood up, like the woman admitting her WoW addiction, and open up their hearts. Seeing them do it brings context about them.

But only being able to hear their voices, and not see them, was odd. It was like their secrets were on postcards and I was hearing them narrate those hidden words.

Warren said that he usually speaks in front of audiences measured in the hundreds, most of whom are women. Indeed, Wednesday night's event here was just that.

But he said his biggest-ever audience was at last March's South by Southwest Interactive festival, where about 2,000 people crowded in to hear him speak at the Austin (Tex.) Convention Center. And that talk, he said, due to the nature of SXSW, which is a technology conference, had the gender mix turned on its head.

I was in the room for that talk, and the emotions bared that day have stayed with me ever since.

One of the most beautiful things about it was that the first audience member who spoke surprised us all by publicly proposing marriage to his girlfriend. It was an awesome moment, and the woman accepted. Warren said there's even a video of that moment on YouTube.

And then, witha big smile on his face, he told me Wednesday night that he got an e-mail from the man a couple of weeks ago, inviting him to the wedding.

The PostSecret project encourages people to write secrets on postcards and send them to the project's curator, Frank Warren. Over the years, he has gotten more than 200,000 postcards and has published four compilations of the cards.

(Credit: PostSecret)

AUSTIN, Texas--Here's my secret: I cried during Frank Warren's keynote speech.

Of course, I wasn't alone. All around the ballroom where Warren, the founder of the PostSecret project, was giving Monday's South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) keynote address, people were misty-eyed. And for me, things he said throughout his talk had tears rolling down my face.

It's not surprising, though. For those unfamiliar with PostSecret, it's the project Warren has been doing for several years where he encourages the public to send him anonymous postcards with some sort of personal secret. Over the years, he has collected more than 200,000 of the cards, published four compilations of them, and created a blog community where people can view many of those cards and the secrets they contain.

PostSecret project founder and curator Frank Warren delivering his keynote address at SXSWi on Monday in Austin, Texas.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

Warren began his talk by explaining some of the things he's learned over the years since he began the project. In a short, emotionally moving video that expressed the three surprises that have emerged from the project: That he's seen so much "soulful" art incorporated into the postcards; that people have "tons" of secrets; and that he has been "astonished" by the frailty and heroism of ordinary people, Warren set the stage for the afternoon and for talking about what the project has meant to him and to so many of the people who have participated in it.

"I think we all have secrets," Warren said, "and I like to imagine us keeping them in a box. Each day we face a choice to bury (them) down deep inside it, or find the box, bring it out in the light, open it up, and share the secrets with the light."

To illustrate what he meant, and to show the audience how personal the secrets can be, he read a series of the postcards he had brought with him.

One, a picture of a sonogram with a child in it read, "I passed her at the store the other day. I wonder if she knows. I almost had his child. I wonder if I should tell her."

Another read, "My boyfriend is deaf, and when we have sex, I scream my ex's name."

Warren explained that the cards don't all come in a traditional postcard form. Many, in fact, take altogether different forms.

For example, he said he had received secrets on parking tickets and that he'd gotten six different secrets written--and jumbled--on mixed-up Rubik's cubes. For those, he said, he had to break the cubes open and put them back together in order to read the text properly.

One non-postcard favorite, he said, was written on a Starbuck's coffee cup, and read: "I serve decaf to customers who are rude to me."

Warren said he has always been impressed by the way PostSecret's participants incorporate art and imagery into their postcards.

(Credit: PostSecret)

Still other cards express how angry people can be at the circumstances of their lives and the little things they do to strike back.

"I put lipstick on my boss' shirt," read Warren off one card, "so his wife would think we're having an affair, even though we're not."

And on the side of the card, its sender had added, "This sounds crazy even to me."

Still another card, from a baggage handler somewhere, read, "You called me an idiot, so I sent your bags to the wrong destination. Whoops! I guess you were right."

"There's a lot of wisdom and knowledge you can extract," Warren said, "from thoughtful, soulful confessions."

Before the keynote speech began, attendees had the opportunity to write their own secrets on cards and turn them in. So Warren read a few of the ones people had dropped off. Some of them were devastating in their honesty and their commentary on business and society.

"Work paid for me to come here," one attendee wrote, "but I'm actually here to find another job."

"My company, a large one, sent me to SXSW in order to steal ideas from start-ups," another card read. "I'm pretending to be a freelancer."

This one was greeted by loud hisses from the packed house.

One of the two large drawings based on Warren's keynote speech that artists created during his talk.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

Warren said that over the years and with all the cards and secrets, he's felt that two themes have emerged from all he's seen.

The first, he explained, is that when people think they're keeping secrets, the truth may be that the secrets are keeping them, and could well be affecting relationships and the way people see the world.

"The other part of the story," he added, "is that it shows we all have the potential in one courageous moment to change our life...and to liberate ourselves."

He then explained how the PostSecret project began. He said that he had handed out cards on the streets of Washington, D.C., and had put some of the very first ones on the wall at an art gallery there.

"The most common" thing he encountered in handing out the cards, Warren said, "was people who said, 'I don't have any secrets.' But I always made sure they took a card, because they have the best secrets."

After exhibiting the cards and getting very positive responses, he said, the cards started to come from people he'd never even handed them out to. The project had taken on a life of its own, he explained, so he started his blog, a site that has now made it possible for anyone to see how bare people lay their souls when sending in the cards and the secrets they contain.

The second artistic drawing done based on Warren's keynote address at SXSWi.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

He then talked about how, after the blog became a phenomenon, HarperCollins publishers approached him about making a book out of the project. And while many of the early cards were included in the first book--there are now four--there were some that didn't get included for several reasons, including too much sexual content or potential copyright violations.

So he showed off a few of his favorite book reject cards.

One read: "I work with a bunch of uptight, religious people, so sometimes I don't wear panties, and I just have a big smile on my face."

Another said, "I like to watch Dr. Phil. Drunk."

And a third read, "All my life I wanted to look like Liz Taylor. Now Liz Taylor's starting to look like me."

To Warren, the most gratifying moment in the entire project's history was when he got an e-mail from the man who had founded a national suicide prevention hotline saying the hotline was out of money and needed help.

So Warren posted the plea on the blog and within a week, he said, readers had contributed more than $30,000, enough to keep the hotline afloat.

Warren opened up the talk to audience questions, and for anyone to reveal their secrets, and the first person to do so came up on stage and proposed to his girlfriend. She accepted the proposal, and the two walked off-stage engaged.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

"So the next time someone says virtual communities don't make a difference in the real world," Warren said to cheers, "they do, every day."

One thing that comes up frequently with the project is that the cards arrive at Warren's house with bar code stickers added by the post office covering some of the words of the secrets.

That annoys a lot of the blog's readers, Warren explained.

"Frank, peel off the white stickers," pleaded one blog reader who wrote Warren. "The post office puts them on, not the people sending the cards."

"And then I can't read the rest of the message," Warren said, because it was hidden behind one of the post office's stickers.

The crowd erupted with laughter.

Finally, Warren finished his prepared remarks, and said he was ready to turn the microphone over to audience members with secrets to share.

And one had apparently gotten in touch with him before the talk, because he was standing in the wings, waiting to come on stage.

The man got in front of the audience and proceeded to propose to his girlfriend, holding out a large engagement ring.

After a brief pause, in which the man said, "I'm shaking up here, hurry up," the girlfriend came up on stage to join him where they embraced and he put the ring on her finger to huge applause.

And, as you might expect, the tears were everywhere. Including streaming down my cheeks.

See more stories in CNET News.com's coverage of SXSWi (click here).