The Auburn University Ballroom burst into applause as The Most Trusted Stranger in America walked across the stage.
Auburn University welcomed Frank Warren, founder of PostSecret, to campus Monday night to talk about his project, share secrets and invite the audience to share some secrets of their own.
The event was meaningful not only to the fans who attended, but also to Warren himself.
As he said, "For me the most gratifying part of the project is what I'm doing on college campuses." The attractiveness of the program to college students was emphasized by Melinda Kun, a junior in collaborative special education.
"I feel like it's a form of therapy," Kun said.
Kun first discovered PostSecret online while surfing the Internet.
Warren began the program by explaining some of the history and purpose behind his project. PostSecret was begun by Warren in November 2004 as a community art project in Washington D.C. in which he handed out postcards to strangers and asked them to mail him their secrets.
Warren never expected the experiment to continue after he stopped handing out cards on the street. In reality, the secrets have not stopped pouring in since.
With the help of Warren's blog, which he used to post the secrets he received in the mail, word of the experiment spread quickly. Now, over 1,000 postcards are delivered to Warren's house every week, and his Web site, which is updated every
Sunday, receives over seven million visits per month. Five books of secrets have since been published. When asked to what he attributes the popularity of the project, Warren responded, "I believe we can identify with secrets other than our own."
Warren also spoke at length about Hopeline, a national suicide prevention hotline which is closely affiliated with PostSecret. Having lost a friend to suicide in his youth, Warren has made the prevention of suicide one of his major causes.
Last month, the PostSecret project and its followers were responsible for helping raise more than $100,000 to aid in suicide prevention.
Warren shared a slideshow of secrets that were not published in the books for various reasons, including corporate censorship and copyright barriers. Subjects covered a wide range, from religion to domestic violence to marriage proposals. Following the slideshow, Warren invited the audience to come forward and share their own secrets. After some initial hesitation, lines began to form behind
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
