Half-truths and Secrets

A Post Secret

Sometimes I’ve almost slipped. Facebook and Twitter and Skype and all sorts of other networking status update tools have started feeling so natural.  I started wondering about social niceties and unspoken rules.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I did slip.  If I spoke some real truth, as opposed to the selected truth we use to build up our online and offline identities.  Even casually.

How would the world take it should an acquaintance type up (in 140 characters or less, of course): “Spent a couple hours masturbating this AM before heading to scrummy brunch. Mimosas and crisp bacon really completed my day ;-)” OR “Off my meds, ate a whole pizza, can’t get out of bed, afraid I’m going over the edge” OR “I am so horny for my boss I am this far away from jumping him in the copy room” OR “XXX should just die!  Just jump off a cliff or have a good samaritain pull the trigger once and for all!” OR “Oh God I think I’m a lesbian!” OR “F*uck you world! Just f*ck you up the ass and around the corner and out your nose!”

Etc.  Not that these are in any way my confessions.

A Post Secret

Good grief, right?

Maybe not.  I have friends who are far more frank than I dare to be.  Not necessarily in very personal confessions, but rather in provocative links, daring allusions, vulgar or eye-opening or disgusting photos. Or even in their use of profanity, which I use rarely.

And the world certainly does have a need.  Ever heard of Post Secret? My sister is a new addict.  What started as an interesting contemporary art project (people sending in anonymous post cards spilling their secrets, compiled now into books), is something of an internet sensation. She reads posts on facebook, on the website, and even on twitter.  I think she’s even submitted.

By the light of the Hanukah Menorah my sister regaled me and a friend with tales of the anonymous who just had to reveal their sordid secrets to someone.  A woman was told her fiance was killed in Iraq only to find out later that he had married someone else.  Someone claiming to be a good person, not a racist in any way, finds Hitler irresistably sexy.  A woman admits to putting boogers in her husband’s food when she’s pissed off at him.  And it goes on and on.

Should we be more open and honest? Could this all really harm our online identities, or rather, our real identities? Some secrets protect. Some things may be best left unsaid. But what if you really feel like saying them? We have such a real need to be heard, especially about the things we find the most difficult to discuss.

Image from the Post Secret book

I’m just saying. They say the truth can set you free. Maybe it provides some relief.  But in this world, unless you have a stone facade, are totally confident with your situation, and are perhaps even independently wealthy, the truth seems to be a luxury.  I wish it were the case that the world would come together more, that friends would be more compassionate to each other, that we would push to become our better selves, in light of all this honesty.  We are all human – fallible, petty, hurt horny vindictive bastards.

But no.

Who would hire a bitchy bipolar bisexual Baptist? Any takers? Didn’t think so.  But that’s totally not me.  I’m Jewish, after all…