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'Confessional culture' draws a crowd
Embarrassing diaries become stage pieces and private humiliation becomes public display in this new take on reality entertainment.
from the January 31, 2007 edition
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"I think we are so deep now in the age of irony, that there is a backlash," pop-culture expert Thompson says. "Ironic wise-guyism and deep sincerity will be duking it out for a while." Still, despite the resurgence in sincere entertainment, Thompson says that he doesn't believe that in 10 years America will be a more confessional society. But, he adds, it might be a society with fewer things to be embarrassed about.
When he was growing up in the 1960s, a humiliating incident in school could ruin a kid's social life for years, Thompson says. Now kids own up to potentially embarrassing situations, make a wisecrack, and move on with a certain amount of pride in having shared their story. "The tendency and desire to talk about ourselves has overcome the feeling of embarrassment," he says. "Everybody forgets it. Frankly, I think [this] is a kinder and gentler way of approaching it."
In the fall of 2005, Frank Warren printed 3,000 self-addressed postcards and distributed them around Washington, D.C. – from cafes to the subway. Recipients were asked to write their deepest secret on the card and mail it back to Mr. Warren anonymously. It caught on, and today Post Secret is one of the most-visited sites on the Internet with 3 million to 4 million visitors a month. (It recently ranked No. 9 on blog-tracker Technorati). This month, Warren received post card number 100,000.
The rawness and authenticity of these confessions touched Warren unexpectedly when, a couple of months into the project, he was reminded of a humiliating experience from his own childhood that he had never shared with anybody.
"At some level I might have been struggling with my own secret," Warren says, reflecting on the creation of Post Secret. "There is a wonder and mystery about the project that I still don't understand."
Warren shared his secret with his wife, wrote it on a postcard, and mailed it to himself, which brought him a sense of healing.
"Everybody has a secret that could break your heart if you knew it," says Warren.
Princess of the 'Oddballs'
As Author C.S. Lewis once wrote, "We read to know we are not alone." Part of the attraction of consuming personal stories of ordinary people lies in the sense of connection many find. When Lisa Bonack picked up Hillary Carlip's memoir, "Queen of the Oddballs," she was at a low point in her life. But as Ms. Bonack writes in the essay below, Ms. Carlip's confession helped her turn her own life around.
Bonack, who works for a regional repertory theater, wrote this essay as a courtesy to accompany the Monitor's story on America's "confession culture." It not only illustrates the connection people feel to personal material, it also illustrates the genre itself.
Lisa Bonack writes:
"I've always felt a tad out of step with everyone around me. Although I had some close friends and moved easily among social circles, I felt different and quite lonely. Quirky interests would grow to obsession and then dissipate altogether in a matter of weeks. My moods followed suit, cycling between highs and lows. At age 18, I was diagnosed bipolar.
"In school, surrounded by classmates who had known me virtually my whole life, my differences were never questioned. While I may not have felt understood, I did feel accepted. As an adult I encountered far more people who didn't get me than did, and as a result it was difficult to break into new groups, particularly in work situations where the staff had existing relationships with one another. Eventually being the chronic outsider left me feeling isolated and paranoid and things usually ended badly.
"After leaving a job impulsively, I found myself underemployed for over a year. Finally I landed a job at an independent bookseller. It should have been my dream job, but I was miserable. There were only a couple people on the staff whom I felt comfortable with, the perfectionist in me hated that there was no way I could know every book inside and out, and reading, a favorite pastime, became work. Within a couple months, I had plunged into a suicidal depression.
"I came into work and found an advance copy of 'Queen of the Oddballs' waiting for me. I started reading and felt an immediate connection. Hillary Carlip was the person I wanted to be – a person I didn't even realize was possible! I still wanted to kill myself, but maybe I'd wait until I finished the book. By the time I was done, I didn't want to die. This stranger's memoir gave me some hope. Her book bought me enough time to get help. I felt compelled to write to her and started an e-mail friendship that still helps me through the bad days."
Where to look for personal stories
Many confession or personal story-centered projects are out there now, on many media: websites, radio shows, magazines, etc. The Internet is plagued with unmoderated confession sites, but the projects listed below are all mediated, edited, or both.
FOUND magazine (
http://foundmagazine.com/)
Jason Bitner, cofounder of FOUND magazine, became fascinated with the lives of others while working for a recycling center
in the Chicago suburbs as a teenager. As he sorted newsprint from coated stock, he came across letters, notes, and to-do lists.
He started reading them. "I know my own life really well," Mr. Bitner says. "But I don't get the sense I understand the lives
of others who are in a different place." The scraps he and others find and publish in FOUND give him an idea of what other
people are up to.
Read the Monitor story on FOUND.
Fresh Yarn (
http://www.freshyarn.com/)
On the website, Hillary Carlip describes her project of personal essays like this: "You'll read stories from this emerging
genre that are humorous, provocative, dramatic, simple, sweet, raunchy, intimate, bold – and all true."
Mortified (
http://getmortified.com/)
"Mortified" is a stage show traveling from coast to coast, in which men and women read from their embarrassing (or humiliating)
teenage diaries or letters. On the website, it bills itself as a "a comic excavation of teen-angst artifacts."
Read the Monitor story on Mortified.
Post Secret (
http://post secret.blogspot.com/)
Frank Warren updates his site every Sunday, sticking closely to its mission statement: "Post Secret is an ongoing community
art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." Selected secrets have been
compiled in three books: "Post Secret," "My Secret" and "The Secret Lives of Men and Women."
StoryCorps (
http://storycorps.net/)
Stories from this audio project can be heard often on public radio stations. StoryCorps travels the country, setting up a
booth where friends and family can come in and record one another's stories. Producers hope the recordings, stored at the
Library of Congress, will create an oral history of America.
This American Life (
http://www.thisamericanlife.com/)
"This American Life" is a weekly one-hour radio program hosted by Ira Glass and carried by more than 500 public radio stations
across the country. It uses various formats – from reported pieces to audio essays – to tell stories from all walks of American
life.
[Editor's note: The original version contained links to material that did not meet Monitor standards.]
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