It's quite possible that Frank Warren's zip code is the third most famous to come out of the US, second to New York City's 10001, and the nineties teen drama 90210.
That's because for past decade, this American from Germantown, Maryland has been the receipient of postcard confessions from strangers as part of his PostSecret project.
From the shocking to the soulful, heart-breaking to the humorous, Warren has been a diligient curator of this noughties internet cultural phenomenon.
"I started Post a Secret ten years ago and I think I started it for more than one reason. I had a boring job so I was encouraged on the weekends to do something more creative," Warren told SBS Insight.
"But I think at a deeper level too, like many people, I was keeping secrets from myself and through this artistic project creating a safe place where other people could share their secrets with me, maybe I needed that place to uncover secrets I'd buried long ago more than anybody else."
Since 2004, he's been the keeper of close to half a million secrets, all of which have been submitted anonymously, of course.
Frank Warren created the PostSecret art project.
"I get hundreds every week and try to select secrets for postsecret.com that I have not seen before or that express a common secret in a new of visually interesting way," he wrote in a reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything).
"I always try to include secrets that touch on the full range of human emotion. So there will always be at least one secret that's funny, shocking, erotic, controversial, hopeful, etc. I also try to arrange the secrets so they tell a story."
"For me the most disturbing secret was a photograph of a young girl who had cut her face so that it appeared as though she was crying blood tears ... Of course, another kind of disturbing secret I get often is; 'I pee in the shower'."
It's easy to see why confessions via snail mail is so appealing. Postcards give people true anonymity - there's no traceable digital footprint - especially in a world where mass surveillance is so prevalent.
Warren told SBS Insight there are two kinds of secrets: the ones we keep from others, and the ones we hide from ourselves.
"We think we're keeping a secret but actually in some cases that secret can be keeping us," Warren says.
In a recent Columnbia University study, "Exploring the secrecy burden: Secrets, preoccupation, and perceptual judgments", Professor Michael Slepian found that the secret-keeper can feel physically "weighed down" by it, which may also lead to diminished performance at work and poor engagement with people and relationships.
“The more you feel preoccupied by a secret and are thinking about it, the more you are using your personal resources — cognitive and motivational — the less energy you feel you have available to pursue other tasks. You see things around you as more challenging. It's the same outcome as when you are carrying a heavy burden," Slepian explains in a press release.
'The more you feel preoccupied by a secret ... It's the same outcome as when you are carrying a heavy burden.'
Overall, Warren believes that when we reveal a secret, the brave act of doing so is able relieve the burden of holding onto a secret.
"You keep a secret inside and it feels like this wall that's separating us from others. But if we can find the courage to be vulnerable and release it and let it go and trust it to the people who are close to us, we instantly realise that that secret was never a wall at all, it was always a bridge the whole time."
"Secrets can be a burden. They can weigh us down and sometimes by letting them go, by giving them words, it doesn't just give us ownership over those hidden parts of who we are or who we're hiding from, it allows us to take that first step in a much longer journey to share that secret in a way that's healthiest for us with the right person. Because in the end secrets are the currency of intimacy," Warren said.
Frank Warren is a guest on Insight's "Keeping Secrets" show. He will also be livetweeting throughout the program at @postsecret. Tune into Insight on Tuesday May 5 at 8.30pm AEST on SBS ONE.
This week, we explore the burden of keeping secrets and ask if it's ever a good idea to let skeletons out of the vault. When should someone keep a secret, and when do you tell all? Can secrets harm us?
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