E-Mail This Article to a Friend Group therapy (continued)

Q: How do you determine if a confession is real or made up? Or doesn’t it matter?

A: My guidelines have been the same since day one, the guidelines for submitting it and the guidelines for approving it and all that. They’re pretty basic. The first one’s that it should be a confession. The second and third are basically no violent crimes, no sex crimes. Then no identifying information; it really has to be anonymous. Other than that, it’s kind of up to people’s best judgment. It’s a public-moderation system now, so people sort of vote. I do encourage them to weed out the obvious lies, but that’s not so easy. I think the final round of moderation is when people are reading it, and kind of get to decide for themselves. I’m sure there are some really poignant, interesting confessions that are completely made up, but then, I don’t know how much that matters, because the point isn’t really that this person exists and this exact situation happened.

Q: Aside from the presidential threat, do you ever get confessions that seem dangerous, like someone’s thinking of hurting someone else? Is there anything you can do when that happens?

A: There’s nothing I can do. That’s probably the biggest dilemma with this whole thing. You can make an argument that because it’s anonymous, and because people can post anything, that it’s doing more harm than good. But I don’t know. If people actually are doing horrible things and confessing about them, they’ve already done it. I’m providing a public bulletin board. I certainly hope it’s not encouraging any kind of unethical behavior.

Q: So you don’t ever get confessions from people saying they’re planning to do something bad, and then you’re left feeling like, oh no, there’s nothing I can do to stop this?

A: That’s probably one of the reasons I don’t read the thing anymore.

Q: You don’t read it at all?

A: No.

Q: I know initially GroupHug was a spare-time project for you. What were you doing with the bulk of your time then, and what about now?

A: Then I was a freelance graphic designer. [GroupHug] has never made me any money. Hopefully, the book will make some money. But it’s never been a job. As much time as I may have put into it, it was always in my free time. Now I probably spend less time than ever dealing with it. I’m personally moving into a full-time job that’s going to really require all of my time. I’m an art director at Arnold Worldwide. So I probably won’t have a whole lot of time to coddle my little Web baby.

Q: Well, it sounds like you’re somewhat bored with it at this point, anyway.

A: Yeah. The nice thing about the book, for example, was that by necessity I reached a point where I was done with it. Now I just sit back and wait for my millions to roll in. Whereas with something like a Web site, it’s an indefinite kind of project. I didn’t know how long I would keep it around. I’ve kind of thrown together other little experiments that I got bored enough with to where I shut them down or they just didn’t catch on. This one, people are still interested in, so it’ll be up, as far as I know, forever. My interest in it is done. I had my fun with it. As far as a social experiment goes, I guess it was a success: it caught on, created a meme. People are still really interested in it. I suppose I’d probably be interested in finding somebody who was more genuinely interested in the topic matter to keep it running.

Q: Who chose which confessions would be in the book?

A: I did. At that point I was much more familiar with the content than I am now, so I handpicked all of them for the book.

Q: Did you have favorites that had stuck with you?

A: Yeah, there were a few that I had bookmarked, just because I thought they were particularly funny or interesting. Now none of them stick with me. It’s like a record that I really liked in high school.

Q: That you never want to listen to again.

A: Exactly.

Q: So are you tired of talking about it?

A: Honestly, sometimes, yeah. I like it when somebody recognizes it, or maybe knows who I am in relation to it. Some people have asked me if it bums me out that it might be one of my major life accomplishments. Not really. I don’t expect it to follow me in any kind of negative way.

Q: People are probably asking you to talk about it a lot right now because of the book.

A: Yeah, exactly. And I’m certainly interested in promoting the book. But as far as the whole concept of the site and all that, I kind of feel like I’ve talked it to death. I don’t have any new analysis on it.

Q: Well, maybe you can talk to me about this: your publisher’s publicist says "the concept of the online confessional has numerous social, cultural, and religious ramifications worth exploring." Tell me about that quote.

A: I think that’s probably true. Other people have explored it in far more depth than I have. I’ve been sent several papers that people have written about it, and some people have written some sort of interesting things in the press. I think what was interesting to me about it in the first place was having a successful project and just seeing what people would do with it. I don’t think it has any ramifications, really. People have been doing the exact same thing forever, like messages in a bottle or hobo signs on trains or graffiti or letters to the editor. I think it’s one in a long line of people telling stories. I suspect that somebody will do something more interesting with the concept at some point in the future.

Gabriel Jeffrey reads from Stoned, Naked, and Looking in My Neighbor’s Window at the Harvard Coop, in Cambridge, on March 2, at 7 p.m. Call (617) 499-2000. He reads at Barnes & Noble, in Kenmore Square, on March 21, at 7 p.m. Call (617) 236-7498. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com