Photo by Arthur Tan
Our love for secrets has got us spilling them all over the World Wide Web.
It’s eleven o’clock in the evening and your half-shut eyes lazily browse through your barely written paper. With half a page done and several more to go, you decide that it’s as good a time as any to go on that much-deserved Facebook break—after all, you’ve earned it.
As you scroll through your news feed, a post catches your eye: In a head-splitting mix of English and Filipino, it reads: “Pare, I’m sorry I slept with your GF dati. She made patol me kasi eh.” Well, so much for that paper.
The above scenario has become an all too familiar ritual for many Ateneans who spend countless hours on the Ateneo de Manila University Secret Files (ADMUSF) Facebook page, a confession page where the students can share their secrets and stories.
And while bare-all, share-all pages like ADMUSF have elicited responses ranging from perverse delight to moral outrage, one thing is certain: The fascination with other people’s dirty laundry is almost as intriguing as the secrets we so readily devour.
Classified history
Although pages like ADMUSF are relatively recent creations, the phenomenon of anonymously sharing secrets through public media is actually much older than you might think.
Long before angst-filled college students were sharing their escapades online, a former soldier named William Mann decided to make a profit of other people’s secrets by publishing them as blind items in his newspaper. These blind items usually came in the form of incriminating tidbits of gossip, where the identities of the people involved were left out.
Not long after, secret sharing found itself popping up in a variety of different media, ranging from magazines to radio programs. In the Philippines, radio shows like Boys Night Out encourage listeners to phone in their secret confessions on air. The juicier ones are usually firsthand accounts of unrequited love.
Like all other things, the phenomenon eventually found itself in the not-so-holy domain of the Internet. “The technology we have encourages us to share because it’s so easy to be online and to be connected with other people,” explains Communication Department instructor Andrew Ty. With the advent of easily accessible and widely-used social media sites, sharing secrets is easier than ever.
“Ateneo Secret Files, it’s simply one example of it. You have other websites like PostSecret,” shares Ty, referring to the long-running online art project where users anonymously mail in their secrets on postcards.
“You also have the way in which some people update their Facebook status by being cryptic and being very mysterious,” Ty says, describing how many have taken to social media to hint at their inner turmoil. Facebook and Twitter have become avenues to take jabs at other people or to subtly vent.
The appeal of secret sharing has indeed been magnified by its transition into social media. “For starters, everyone loves secrets, especially other people’s. It’s mostly linked to curiosity, which people have varying levels of,” explains Psychology instructor Pocholo Velasquez. “Social media has magnified this curiosity, I think. Knowing about another person’s secrets, even if you do not know that person, is very gratifying.”
At the heart of the secret
Although secret sharing through the Internet has been around for quite some time, it didn’t really gain much collective traction among Ateneans until the emergence of the Secret Files trend late last year. Popularized by University of the Philippines’ Diliman Files, schools like the University of Santo Tomas and De la Salle University now each have their own version of Secret Files.
Within a few days of being set up, the ADMUSF page rapidly spread through the Ateneo community. “I became aware of ADMUSF through my blockmates. They usually talk about what’s in it and try to guess who are behind the posts,” says management engineering sophomore Ivan King.
While mere curiosity was enough to bait people into visiting the page, it was ADMUSF’s inappropriate content that proved to reel them in. “I remember the really raunchy stuff,” shares management-honors sophomore Gabby Go. “I couldn’t believe the declarations of admiration to my friends, the posts about unrequited love, the occasional happy-kilig stories and posts about students having difficult times but keeping it from their friends and families.”
King feels the same way, sharing that one of the most memorable posts on ADMUSF for him was the one about the two male Ateneans who started casually hooking up after first meeting at an org party. The clincher? They were cousins.
For many people, ADMUSF provides a welcome escape from the stress of academic work, in addition to building a stronger sense of community in the Ateneo. “It’s mindless fun because you get these little slices of life from people you go to school with. And you feel like you’re part of this community when you talk about it with other Ateneans,” remarks Go.
However, not everyone is pleased with ADMUSF. For some members of the Ateneo community, it’s unsavory because of its occasionally sexist and promiscuous content. Sophomore management major Patricia Felizardo recalls a particularly off-putting post on ADMUSF, where the author said that girls shouldn’t be mad about being objectified, since their skimpy clothing was an indication of them “asking for it.”
“Sometimes I enjoy going to the page, but lately I’m not enjoying it because it seems to be full of not-so-desirable comments and behavior; and some stories are highly unbelievable,” discloses Felizardo. “I’m not really revolted as a whole, but the fact that some posts are extreme in nature kind of puts me off. It’s so tawdry sometimes.”
Secretive allure
Although many aren’t aware of it, the fascination with skeletons in the closet can be rooted in how much we value the idea of a secret. As Ty puts it, “With secrets, you aren’t sharing things that are unimportant. The importance of secrets comes from the fact that it’s labeled as a secret.”
More than the idea of knowing something confidential, the appeal of pages like ADMUSF also lies in anonymity. According to a study by researchers from Carnegie Mellon, anonymity online provides a sense of protection for many people, which reduces the social risks of discussing controversial opinions and topics.
“The things we can’t quite confess to our friends, we can confess to strangers. Or we can confess them in a way that makes it seem [they’re] coming from a stranger, since we don’t identify ourselves,” explains Ty. Anonymity gives off a certain sense of security, because it makes us feel like we’re being sincere and honest.
Velasquez shares the same sentiments. “For the writers, submitting secrets—albeit curated by a moderator—allows for some sort of liberating feeling. It’s like you’re putting your secret out there in the open, for all to see, and at the same time protecting your identity.”
But above all else, the allure of secret sharing pages is that they show how people aren’t all that different from each other, despite their peculiarities. “A lot of things on ADMUSF sound crazy and unbelievable yet you know the people there are just like us, which makes it so beguiling,” says Go.
Regardless of the reason, secret sharing has become an indispensible fixture in our everyday experience, allowing people to continue sharing their dirty secrets through public media—for as long as they have an audience. And from the looks of it, this audience isn’t going anywhere.
With reports from Benny G. Tañedo
“Secret Files.”
Mostly where kids tell big lies, or distort the truth, or share fantasies. It’s a big form of disrespect for our university—a Filipino, Jesuit, and Catholic educational institution.
Wise up and grow up, kids.