Post Secret Simulations

To be honest, the website postsecret.blogspot.com unnerves me somewhat. The voyeuristic display of personal problems, not to be shared with people but with a fictional universal audience of the internet (strangely not unlike this blog) displays an odd spin on responsibility to yourself or the people you live with

Of course, the charm of the site comes from the fact that everything gets displayed on a postcard. This Medium changes the way the messages work. The snapshots of reality demonstrate their un-reality because they come on nothing more than postcards. Each one emerges from reality but becomes something of its own, representing a hint of situated reality, but decontextualized and dramatized into whatever the viewer perceives as true within them. It allows for decipherment and intelligibility to an otherwise unimaginable situation. By giving them a sense of coherence, it gives events an abstracted detachment, making them viewable and pleasurable. So, the joy and power of PostSecret comes not from the reality or humanity of it all, but rather the fiction of it all- the disconnect between the narrative flow of human experience to a freezeframed moment on card.

I don’t object to the pornography of the images, but rather the image-ness of the images: the way they become something different from that which they supposedly represent