Post Secret Secrets Versus Second Life Secret Secrets

I sometimes read SL Secret, the intriguing Shopping Cart Disco series inspired by Post Secret, the famed blog I also sometimes read, and though they're both published every Sunday and they both share the premise of anonymous people anonymously submitting secrets to a blog (the former about secrets from Second Life's user community), I noticed a pretty striking contrast between the two:

If that's a fair summary (and I kind of think it is), then that suggests another contrast: Whereas the secrets in Post Secret are likely to be cathartic and therapeutic (both for the secret teller, and the Post Secret reader who shares a similar secret, and in reading, is relieved to realize others feel the same way), the secrets in SL Secret are not likely to be either. (Cathartic or therapeutic, that is.)

Just my personal feeling, but someday, I'd love to see an SL Secret where the secrets were much more like the secrets of Post Secret.

Original Post Secret secret via Post Secret Archive.

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Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

It looks to mostly be a place where people try to have a little chuckle at stirring up drama with anonymous posts. Posts which therefore are sure to match certain suspicions many of us feel at times, but which might not have any bearing in any truth.

There no assurance that the example above actually was made by any merchant, or even anyone who even felt that. Chances are more likely it was made by someone who had an ax to grind against some specific merchant and so decided that 'those people' think like this...

Nothing says Post Secret is any different though...

[kesseret]

SL Secrets are what people make of them. Same with PostSecrets. Frank also has hundreds to skim through during the week to pick a few, we have FAR less to choose from.

I'd like to see SL Secrets be more what their original intention was and I've posted many a secret like that (Anyone remember the mother's day secret? Probably not- it wasn't drama, that was mine though). I've also written a post on the art of SLSecrets but that's not what the community creates.

That's just the way it is. I'd like to see lovely secrets, sad secrets, secrets that inspire, and secrets that make me pause. I welcome them.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Secrets by their very nature are petty and vindictive things. The projects is doomed in the inception by its very concept.

[Iris Ophelia]

Here's what I find interesting. SLSecrets have been a pretty longstanding part of SL's fashion community, and almost every single post-secret-style spinoff rooted in fashion communities online seems to turn into a dramafest/hatefest. An extreme example is Loli-Secrets, a post-secret type thing done by people who adore the super innocent and mega-sweet lolita style ( http://loli-secret.livejournal.com/ ). Who knew people who love such adorable doll-like fashions could be so cruel and hateful inside. I've yet to find a fashionista secrets community that doesn't utterly disgust me more oftent han not.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Spewing bile isn't cathartic and theraputic?

Oh well, time to shut down the Internet.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"Loli-Secrets, a post-secret type thing done by people who adore the super innocent and mega-sweet lolita style"
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I'm no Prok... but I only have to say 'lolicon' to conjure up some very nightmarish imagery and show why a 'loli' community ends up troubled.

I don't know about other fashion communities - but that particular one is one I would be surprised to find not infested with problems.

[Connie Arida]

When you don't even have to put your SL name to the post, who really takes what is "said" seriously?

[Iris Ophelia]

@Pussycat Soooo you're implying the secrets are by/about pedophiles..? Just to clarify, Lolita fashion could be called literally anything else, it has nearly nothing to do with lolicon. It's a bunch of teenaged girls for the most part obsessed with a fringe fashion subculture, just like any number of other fashion communities.

The secrets are just as vitriolic in the Gyaru fashion community, which doesn't have the misfortune of having a name that helps people who don't know better confuse it for something it isn't.