von Guy Kawawaski höchstpersönlich: Ten Questions with PostSecret’s Frank Warren
PostSecret gehört für mich mit Abstand zu einem der faszinierendsten Projekte in der Blogosphäre überhaupt. Wildfremde Menschen schicken Postkarten mit beliebigen Texten (zB Message mit Edding auf Vorderseite) Frank Warren zu, der sie dann auf seinem Blog veröffentlicht. Beliebig sind die Texte jedoch ganz und gar nicht. Ein Blick aufs Blog genügt, um zu verstehen.
Warren über das Warum:
When I started PostSecret my motive was to create a „place“? where people could feel free to share their private hopes, desires and fears. A place where the secrets they could not tell their friends and family would be treated with dignity in a non-judgmental way. But looking back almost three years later, I know that there was another drive at work at the time that I was unaware of. After I started the project I received a secret from a man describing a humiliating childhood experience that he had never shared with anyone. The courage he showed in mailing that postcard to me inspired me to recognize a similar secret I had been carrying alone for more than thirty years. It was an experience that I had never thought of as a secret, but I had never told anyone about it. So I told my secret to my wife and daughter, faced it on a postcard, and“in my case“mailed it to myself. It brought me a sense of healing and ownership of that buried episode in my own life. And now in hindsight, I think the reason I began PostSecret was because at a level below my own awareness, I was struggling to reconcile with a childhood secret. And like others I have heard from, I was able to find greater self-understanding and self-acceptance through a the stranger“s secret.
Hatte schon lange darüber nachgedacht, sowas auch in D anzubieten, doch -ob mans glaubt oder nicht- die Idee geheimste, menschliche Untiefen zu visualisieren ist so faszinierend, dass sich ein „Copy-Cat“ schon aus Respekt vor Frank Warrens Arbeit verbietet. Zudem weiß ich nicht, ob ich mental so drauf bin, dass mich so ein Projekt menschlich gesehen eben nicht verschlingen würde.
Ich stehe nicht alleine offensichtlich, was die Würdigung von Franks Arbeit angeht:
In 2006, his website was awarded five Bloggies, the most distinguished weblog awards ceremony, including Weblog of the Year and Best American Weblog. Warren was also named number 14 on the Forbes list of the twenty-five biggest, brightest, and most influential people on the Internet. In 2006, he was presented with a special award from the National Mental Health Association in recognition of how PostSecret has „moved the cause of mental health forward.“? As an advocate for suicide prevention, Warren is a volunteer for and actively involved in the organization Hopeline/1-800-SUICIDE.
