Secrets are pow­er­ful social objects: they con­nect and bind peo­ple in a unique way. Monday’s keynote at SXSW fea­tured Frank War­ren of Post­Se­cret, who gave insights into the “unity we share, but often for­get”. Dur­ing this pre­sen­ta­tion, a per­son walked on stage and pro­posed to his girlfriend.

“With post­se­cret, Frank War­ren pio­neered the idea that a web­site can serve as a an anony­mous online con­fes­sional. Lis­ten to his mov­ing story about the trust his read­ers put in him, as well as his thoughts about how tech­nol­ogy can help us over­come some of our dark­est fears.”

“There are two types of secrets, those we hyde from oth­ers, and those we hide from our­selves” — Frank

Has received over 200,000 secrets in three years. Has received secrets in all types of for­mats, includ­ing one on each side of a mixed-up Rubik’s Cube. Also on a Starbuck’s cup, that read “I serve decaf to cus­tomers who are rude to me”:

- “My boyfriend is deaf and when we have sex I scream my ex’s name”
- “I put lip­stick on my bosses shirt so his wife thinks we’re hav­ing an affair even if we’re not. This sounds crazy even to me”
- “I know my child is not mine, but I love her any­ways”
- “You called me an idiot so I sent your bags to a wrong des­ti­na­tion. Opps, I guess you were right!”
- Favorite one: “Dear Frank, when I wrote down my secret to send to you, I felt hor­ri­ble read­ing it, and at that moment I decided I will no longer be that per­son who car­ries this secret inside for the rest of my life.”
- “You told me your dark­est secret, and my heart ached because I real­ized I could not pos­si­ble love you ever more”
- “I’ve gone through dark peri­ods in my life and I’ve learned to have patience, because hope does not always come on the time sched­ule we would like”
- “I know how to fix my life, I just chose not to”
- “He’s been in jail for some­thing I did 10 years, 5 more to go”
- “The secret I mailed in last week was true when I mailed it, but it’s no longer true now”

SXSW secrets:

- “All these web celebs have never worked with clients”
- “Work paid for me to come here, but I actu­ally came here to find another job”
- “My com­pany, a large one, has sent me here to steal ideas from star­tups. I’m pos­ing as a freelancer”

Pre­sen­ta­tion, dis­cus­sion and ques­tion and answer

Three years ago printed and handed out 3,000 post­cards with instruc­tions on shar­ing a secret to an art project. “Hi, my name is Frank and I’m col­lect­ing secrets.” The peo­ple who say they don’t have any, have the best ones. Secrets started pour­ing in, from all over the world and in many lan­guages. So he started shar­ing these on a blog.

Post­Se­cret is an online com­mu­nity that orga­nizes itself as it devel­ops. There are 10,000 or 100,000 other ideas like Post­Se­cret out there wait­ing to be started. Projects that make us real­ize the greater unity that we all share, but that we often forget.

A rock band made a music video using secrets, and the project also evolved into a book. The project has also been used to raise money to sup­port (and save) a sui­cide pre­ven­tion hotline.

His father did not under­stand the project ini­tially, but one day told Frank a secret that changed their relationship.

Frank had to grow up quickly when he was young and develop a rich inte­rior life … and thought that every­one else also has a rich inte­rior life that’s impor­tant to share. He also found the process of shar­ing a secret very therapeutic.

Peo­ple are shar­ing secrets, but the truth is that sim­i­lar secrets are shared, even by peo­ple sit­ting in the same room.

There is an inti­macy rev­o­lu­tion, an authen­tic­ity rev­o­lu­tion going on. We post pic­tures on Face­book our employ­ers shouldn’t see. Social media tools are dri­ving this type of rev­o­lu­tion and many new forms of authen­tic­ity will emerge.

There are secrets occur­ring in vir­tual worlds, too.

Peo­ple share secrets about sex­ual iden­tity, about abuse … When Frank gets dif­fi­cult and emo­tional ones, he chan­nels the emo­tion to sup­port the sui­cide pre­ven­tion hotline.

He thinks of the post­cards as works of art.

It’s a false dichotomy to think secrets are either true or false.

“Free your secrets and become who you are”- Frank (to a stand­ing ovation)