The Natural Urbanist

As part of a class assignment, I was asked to search the internet for websites telling narratives, such as the one I hope to create here with my own stories. But, I must confess I am much better at using the web to buy things I don't need with money I don't have, than I am at using the internet as a research tool. Therefore, my finds are not stellar, but I enjoyed them.

The first is Post Secret, which I'm sure most people already know about, but the idea is brilliant and once you start reading people's secrets, it's impossible to stop. What makes the site effective is that the concept behind it, the gimmick of anonymously sending in secrets is, powerful enough to tie readers to people they don't know. Within the space of a postcard we are told a story, and because the story is so short we want to keep reading, keep acquiring secrets, and keep identifying with other people. The internet is all about identification, about a wonderful way to discover all the other people out there like you.


The second site I visited is called Travelogues.net. It is exactly what it says it is, a travelogue of one man's journeys around the world. The site is fairly low-tech, but I love reading first-hand accounts that deal with travel because of the rich opportunities they present to learns about people and places and culture. What I think this site has going for it is its candor. It presents the places in a way that is too informal for a guidebook and thus perfectly suited for the internet.


I have to admit I had a lot of trouble finding good narrative sites, and so my last one is perhaps more of a last-ditch effort, but still worth checking out because of the content. The site is for the quarterly webzine Cafe Irreal, which attempts to challenge the traditional notion of a realistic story and goes against created believable characters and situations. It is not necessarily my kind of fiction, but the point again is that is has found a forum in the internet that it might not have had in print.