PostSecret -- One More Rant

[irisjaye]

x-posted to Set Cycle to Spin

Hi --

As I posted earlier, Frank Warren of PostSecret is fine, he is on vacation, I know this because I called the cops .

As I also mentioned earlier, I can't get on PostSecret anymore because everyone sharing their secrets, and wondering where Frank was, and yelling at eachother, has either caused the server to crash, is

Comments

[halfsizecube]

um, I don't think I agree. I think the very nature of a blog is posting things that you want other people whom you don't know to comment upon. It is like having your own personal op-ed page, and if you publish to the world for free you have to accept that the world will answer back in ways you cannot predict or plan. Blogging, or any other type of public opinion making is, by its very nature, a solicitation for the unsolicited, unedited, and unexpected. I think that if people want to restrict their thoughts and ideas to themselves or their own circle of friends they should stick to the low tech methods that work best for those kinds of conversations- private phone calls, in-person conversations, and personal diaries. In other words, as my Mom used to say when I got in arguments with other kids in the neighborhood and then came crying home if someone said something mean to me: Don't dish it out if you can't take it.

[irisjaye]

I agree with what you're saying, and as it turns out Frank was experimenting with keeping the comments turned on. But I think PostSecret is different in that people sending in their secrets don't expect to have them commented on, because the blog has never turned its comments on. So somebody who felt it was safe to admit they were abused, or acted like an idiot, or planned to kill someone, or fed their cat bleach so they could see their hot vet (that one was real), expected to do that in a safe space only to find that 500 people wrote in to say that they should burn in hell. Which is a whole other conversation. But basically I feel like the guy running the blog advertised one thing, then decided on a whim to sell another, without warning anyone, and that is not the greatest judgement, in my opinion.