I’m lost. Tell me again what the purpose is behind Lisa Ling’s new website, “The Secret Society of Women.” In recent media reports she says it came to her after suffering a devastating miscarriage after nine weeks of pregnancy. She was so distraught that she and her friend, Sophia Kim, who is touted as a “digital media whiz,” “decided there needed to be a forum where women could anonymously share their most private pain, their darkest fantasies, and most personal longings,” according to the New York Daily News.
For starters, there is no such thing as anonymous on the Internet. Every single user has a digital fingerprint, usually their IP address. What’s even more insulting to the intelligence of women, is that in order to even post anything, you have to become a member. To become a member, you are required to give your Email Address (it states that it MUST be valid), Date of Birth AND your Postal Code. Hmmm…
If you do feel the urge to post your secret, you may want to erase your history and cookies on you computer or your significant other can simply go into your browser, scroll down and link to any one of the last sites you visited. Secrecy is complicated and suspicious lovers are clever.
The site’s home page tries to lure in the downtrodden, I assume they are downtrodden because they feel the need to become a member of a “secret society,” which isn’t secret because ALL the secrets are posted for everyone to read! So, these downtrodden, guilt ridden individuals, log on and finally, after keeping their secret for so long, post it, right there on an open page visible to millions. In fact, just to entice visitors to stay, the home page even lists “Recent Secrets.”
Am I the only one that believes this is in poor taste? First of all, it isn’t secret. Second, it claims that the site is “Of women. By women.” How can they be sure it is “of and by women” if it’s anonymous? They can’t. And, the site is formulated on one simple idea posted right on the home page for people to see, “A place where we can divulge our deepest secrets about how we look, what we regret, who we fantasize about, what we aspire to do, or whatever else we’ve been keeping inside of us.”
OMG! Really? Do you think predators will go on the site, befriend women, speak to their fears, gain their trust, then BOOM! Your “secret society” friend is not a woman after all, but some creepy loser who now KNOWS your deepest, darkest secret.
What bothers me most about this site is that it plays to every woman’s basic need – a friend to help us overcome our darkest days. Does divulging a secret online really give closure? Perhaps. The site seems to be extremely busy. But, speaking from a paranoid point of view, my own, I think that I would flip out if I posted a secret fantasy only to regret it later and try desperately to remove the post, but I can’t because it’s already out there and I knew I shouldn’t have used my cat’s name to be my anonymous name, because everyone will know that Mrs. Peabody is really me. Now I need to find another site to reveal my secret about revealing my secret!