“Post Secret” and “Hurricane Digital Memory Bank” really drew me in this week. “Post Secret” is strange and wonderful and a bit creepy – all at the same time. Each postcard tells its secret in a unique and artful way. Some secrets are funny, others poignant and others quite sad (more than a few touched on the themes of depression, violence and suicide), I couldn’t help wonder if all of the postcards were real secrets; some of the cards felt a little too glib or cute to be real. Yet there were many instances where I didn’t doubt for a second that the secret was real. As a result, the site left me feeling ambivalent: Sure, it’s great there’s a place where people can bare their souls anonymously, but some of the secrets seemed to allude to crimes and I felt somehow complicit just by reading them.
As for the “Hurricane Digital Memory Bank,” I was intrigued to learn the backstory about this site in an article called “Why Collecting History Online is Web 1.5.” I kind of wished I had seen the article before we launched our own class projects, because it contains many lessons on generating and sustaining an audience. I especially thought it interesting that the site creators carefully designed “Hurricane Digital Memory Bank” to be as user-friendly as possible, yet they ended up learning that the site design ultimately limited the number of contributors because it didn’t allow users to work the way they preferred to. I saw a bit of a parallel to our own group project, PortlandPicks.org. Early decisions on what template to use locked us into a design that probably isn’t very conducive for making itineraries – which is what we ultimately want users to do.
I felt the creepy vibe from Post Secret for sure. I wonder why we had this feeling when looking at the postcards. I would argue that this is slightly due to the fact that they tell us something that we may not want to know, or that we will never know who the person is that created the information. This lack of accountability on the creators part allows them complete creative control over the message they are sending.
You’re absolutely right about early template decisions can affect the options you want to develop down the road. I feel the same way about our decision to make our website using the university’s blog system. At this point, we’re kind of stuck with the word press template and interface. I guess It’s always something we’ll have to think about next time.
I found it really interesting that on one of the cards in the PostSecret project, someone wrote about their disappointment that a previously submitted card did not make it on the website. It made me wonder if people try and manipulate their secrets for the most shock value to try and get them posted on the website. Does that take away at all from the authenticity of the project?