Wednesday, February 13, 2008

PostSecret - A Valentine Video

I finally joined StumbleUpon a couple days ago. Have you heard of this service? You sign up, indicate areas in which you have an interest (shopping, mathematics, art, crafts, etc., etc.) and the service provides you with a "Stumble" button. Each time you hit it, it will take you to a random webpage that matches your interests. I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical about the whole idea - until I tried it. The next thing I knew it was several hours later, and I'd found dozens of new interesting websites that I otherwise would never have encountered. Frankly, I need more time on the Internet the way I need a hole in the head, but the whole serendipity factor to "stumbling" is pretty charming.

Anyway, I have a number of favorites already (which you can see if you visit my page on StumbleUpon - I'm registered as Strandsofbeads), but out of everything I've discovered so far, this is my top pick.

The above YouTube video supports a project called PostSecret. Apparently PostSecret has received a lot of press since its inception, so this may be old news to you. I'd never heard of it, however, and I find it fascinating. The project invites people to reveal their secrets anonymously via handmade postcards. The project asks only that the secret revealed be true and be one that the sender has never disclosed before. Of course, there's no way to check this, but some of these are so poignant, that it's hard to believe there's nothing behind them, even if they aren't strictly "true". Anyway, the postcards are posted to the PostSecret blog each Sunday.

I took a peek at last Sunday's posts, and they are, by and large, wonderful. Many of the postcards are works of art in themselves and they express such a broad range of lovely, wonderful, sad, angry emotions, that it's hard not to fall in love with them. If you aren't already familiar with this blog, I highly recommend it. Please go here to visit it.

3 comments:

Monkee Maker said...

Thanks for that, Melissa, I really enjoyed that clip, and the link. Some really heartfelt and artistic messages.

:)

Anonymous said...

I've been following postsecret for about 4 years now, and I look forward to it every sunday. Isn't it amazing?!

P.S. - I wore your lovely binary code pendant today. It was definitely a conversation starter! Thanks so much for it :o)

-Kim
(skybluebunny)

Melissa J. Lee said...

Hi, MM - so glad you liked the site. It makes me want to look up one of the compilation books, the next time I'm at the bookstore!

Hi, Kim! I _love_ PostSecret - StumbleUpon has been worth it, just for that one site, as far as I'm concerned. I'm so glad you like the binary code pendant. Did anyone guess what it says?