Public Service Confessional

The pressure to display one's ideal life online has been there since the internet pivoted from information superhighway and listserv clearinghouse to the launchpad for social media. As a millennial who came of age as Facebook and MySpace blossomed and 4chan's notoriety rose and fell, the tension between the performative and anonymous hemispheres of the internet has always fascinated me. Each half tugs on either end of the questions of authenticity, safety, the price of displaying mental and emotional health, and what the public "need" or "deserve" from audiences.

In 2015, non-physical spaces to express true honesty in the face of anonymity felt... well, a bit archaic. Public Service Confessional was borne from that feeling, utilizing the metaphor of radio as another space for communities to gather outside the physical to confess and share vulnerable truths with the public. By way of utilizing transistors, the possibility of strangers coming across the transmission of these secrets was a very real possibility. What happens when you overhear a confession that does not feel as if it was meant for you? What happens when the secret you voice into the void is, perhaps, witnessed by another person? Does it feel the same as when you subtweet, make a vague Instagram story, Snapchat to some stranger you met at a party? Or does the lack of contact with the other side make the Public Service Confessional a drastically different experience?