v-s.net v0.6

Tuesday, 11:48 am in Entertainment

So there’s something deliciously vouyeristic about ljsecret.

I remember once picking up an Marie Claire in Woolies (yes, I read trashy women’s mags in the line at the supermarket; bite me) that had an article about PostSecret (and the book), which essentially started out as one guy’s art project, getting people to mail him anonymous postcards containing their deepest, darkest secret. It became hugely popular, and spawned several spinoffs, the LJ community being one of them. As far as I understand it, while the original postSecret only stipulated that people mail in secrets on postcards, people took it upon themselves to turn these postcards into works of art in their own right. ljsecret is kind fo the hyper-condensed version of this; people send in PhotoShopped pictures containing their secrets. Like everything touched by the internet mass-market, most of ljsecret’s ‘secrets’ are pretty emo; “Why doesn’t he love me?” “I hate her.” “I’m ugly.” and “This band/movie/whatever sucks!” are all pretty common. Nevertheless, there’s something wholly life-affirming about reading other people’s secrets. It’s life-affirming because there’s something revealing about finding out first hand that all those secrets you thought you had are, in fact, not weird or unique to you. Everybody out there secretly enjoys picking their nose, worries about tertiary education, harbours resentments against supposed ‘best friends’, has family problems, is afraid of dying alone. Those thoughts and fears you kept deep and dark inside becuase you thought they were ‘weird’ or ‘abnormal’? Chances are you’ll find them on ljsecret.

And yes, I’d be surprised if even half the contributions are ‘real’. It’s a kind of anonymous attention-whoring in and of itself, posting secrets, not to mention the whole culture of just, well, makign shit up. But, realistically, sometimes I wonder if it actually matters. It’s very postmodern – signs and signifiers and all that – but does it really matter, in the long run, if a secret is faked or not so long as it gives at least one person some kind of comfort?

You are not alone.

One of the ladies at work was telling me about one of her daughter’s friends, who used to be the Heart Foundation’s mascot, Happy Heart. Apparently he went to a school once and was kicked by a child. When he asked, “Why are you kicking Happy Heart?” he got the reply;

“I hate Happy Heart and I hope he dies!”

Kids these days, I mean really.

• Mood » voyeuristic