Urge to purge
Gabe Jeffery, creator of the confession site grouphug.us, gets something off his chest in a new compilation book
By Emilie Zanger
Published: January 28th, 2005 | 11:35am
If a stranger walked up to you on the street and told you he had forged a coupon for a free pie, that his wife had used the fake coupon and been thrown in jail, and that, lacking the $750 necessary to bail her out, he had left her there, how would you react? Now, imagine you read this confession on a Web site, and the confessor’s only identification was a random number. Would your reaction change?
Gabe Jeffery, the creative mind behind grouphug.us, took the idea that a confession made in person is fundamentally different from one made anonymously and ran with it, launching the Web’s first totally anonymous confession site in October 2003. Jeffery bet on the universal “cheap thrill” appeal of confessing one’s secrets publicly and anonymously, and he was right. When grouphug.us received 13 million hits in its first three months, it became clear that the graphic designer-cum Internet entrepreneur’s flash of post-modern cathartic inspiration had found a niche market in sin. Every day, thousands of people purge their souls and post their deepest and darkest for the world to see. The site guarantees anonymity: Each time someone submits a confession, only the date and a random number are recorded to identify it. The thrill of confession and the security of anonymity have proven an irresistible combination, and grouphug.us is the fastest-growing confession site on the Web.
In spring 2004, Jeffery began compiling a representative cross sample of the confessions of lies, cheats, kinks, and joys that make up grouphug. The result is the compilation book, Stoned, Naked, and Looking in My Neighbor’s Window: The Best Confessions from GroupHug.us (Justin, Charles, and Co.), released in November 2004, an all-encompassing snapshot of the phenomenon of guilt — and guilty pleasures — in America today.
Jeffery answers our questions about the concept for grouphug.us, its place in American culture, and what it was like slogging through a quarter-million strangers’ indiscretions to compile the book.
In 10,000 words or less, why did you create grouphug.us? How did the idea come about?
I've efforted to come up with some elegant explanation for it — something about gold plates and a closet full of miniature virgins — but the truth is that it was just one of those ideas that became obvious. Since one of the things I do is make Web sites, it wasn't quite so much inspiration as a recurring notion. When it gets cold, you think about buying a jacket. I was bored, so I thought about a Web site where people can confess to things and other people can read it.
And the name?
I saw that Web site addresses ending in .us were on sale for $4.95, so I plucked away at the keyboard looking for something cute and available. It was before I'd started working on the actual site, and all I knew about it was that it would be anonymous group therapy. That made me think of group hugs. Like in Fight Club.
Why is anonymity so vital to the concept of the site?
It's underrated. It's damn near impossible to be “onymously” candid. I'm definitely going to be rethinking using the word “onymously” for the next few minutes. It sounds pretentious.
What’s the most memorable confession a stranger has ever made to you?
People have e-mailed me some shocking stuff, but these days I'm really most moved by confessions in person. It's much easier to get a read on how genuine they're being, and it's far more emotional.
Recently, I hitched a ride with a stranger from Los Angeles to Sacramento. It was only an hour into the drive when he started telling me about a period in his life when he was bisexual and very active. He was so enthusiastic and detailed, talking about blowjobs, blind dates, and prostitutes. Not long after, I was talking with a girl I'd just met at a bar. We were mainly talking about work and the cities we've lived in when she started talking about some pretty serious abuse that she'd suffered through in her life.
It's obvious to me that people really need to talk about things, and it's usually easier to talk about something hard when you don't have a particular relationship with [the person you’re telling]. My favorite confession, though, is when someone tells you they're in love with you.
What benefits does the world reap from grouphug.us’s existence?
Cheap thrills.
With “moral values” topping the list of important issues in the recent presidential election, where does a confession site fit in the American social climate?
I'm constantly surprised how tolerant of the Internet all of those family-values fascists are. A fair number of outraged arbiters of morality have told me I ought to shut the site down, but they're the minority. Grouphug doesn't attempt to make any sort of endorsement or commentary about the confessions. Before the November election, I did make the choice to use the high traffic to promote voting, and I provided a page of links to voter resources that I basically hand-picked, with the help of Music for America. For someone who gets their news from FOX, the resources I was pushing were clearly red propaganda. That upset people more than the normal site content.
Some of these confessions are rather alarming! Has there been anything confessed that you wish you didn’t know about?
People are so similar that there have been times I've read a confession and considered that it could easily be a friend, or an ex-girlfriend, or even me. I'm not sure why, but some of them just feel close and personal. Those are the disturbing ones.
How did you go about compiling the best confessions for the book? How did you define “best” for your purposes?
Personally, I don't refer to the book as the best confessions. My intent has always been for the project to be as honest as possible, without criticism, judgment, or commentary. OK, those are heady and impossible goals, but what I explain in the book introduction is that the confessions I chose are meant to represent the site, not one kid's notion of what's funny or shocking. It's really a distillation of the quarter-million confessions people have submitted. It's a zeitgeist. You'd never read the entire site, but most people will make it through the book in a couple sittings. It gives you a pretty round idea of the things that normal people feel guilty about.
What was the hardest part about the book-writing process?
Since I didn't really write this book, I assume my experience and process was a little different. Reading these confessions for so many hours just got to me. It got to the point where I had to just guess, intellectually, what people would find interesting in a book of confessions. They started to run together like watercolors, until nothing was funny or sad, just gray.
The hard part — which I think is probably the most common to the authoring process — is letting go. I am a graphic designer, so not being involved with the design of the book was very hard. Any time you allow someone else to come in and start rearranging your ideas, and then to put your name on the results and call it your own, it feels very strange.
What was the coolest part?
My name is on a book!
Got anything else to add?
To your readers: Help a starving artist. Even if you don't want to buy the book, ask your local bookseller to stock it. I will love your mind forever.
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