Paul Boutin (of Slate magazine) penned an interesting article today about the website Tired.com, seen below:

What's fascinating is how users have continued to send personal data to the site' operator for the past 9.5 years - generating 32,000 messages to date. The site's operator, Mike Kuniavsky, has a supposition about why:

One theory he's encountered in his user-experience work: People trust simply designed sites. Tired.com's plain-text, unadorned format seems soothing and trustworthy, particularly when compared to the garish, on-the-make look of most sites.

But, Paul's got a different theory that I'm more inclined to agree with:

The people who write in just haven't thought about the possible consequences. The few dozen e-mails Mike shared with me don't read like the artfully revealing posts of hip, ironic webheads who socialize online. They seem like missives from people with overbooked offline lives who happened to be plopped in front of a computer. On the Web, bloggers, the tell-all diarists of Livejournal, and Paris Hilton and her ilk are constantly jostling for attention. By contrast, the stories people send Mike are as mundane and unembellished as his site's home page.

My gut tells me that the folks who write in aren't part of the "online sharing" generation, they're just inexperienced and., most likely, seeking cathartic release. I'd guess that very few even realize that it's not anonymous.

BTW - Slate just introduced a re-design. I think it's an improvement, actually, though I'm not in love. They're talking about it here (not sure how or why it's "sponsored by Nissan" though).