Grouphug Update

The Corsair likes to check in on his favorite guilty pleasure, Grouphug, which is an anonymous confession site that veers from the hilarious to the surreal all in the course of a web page. Like this one:

"i passed out in the shrubbery in my neighborhood park. a dog woke me up the next morning. i don't think anyone found out."

Grouphug is as addictive as a reality show, quite possibly more, because of its startling honesty. The site is the perfect spot to decompress after this acrimonious election and the lack of authenticity on both sides. Reading grouphug is like listening in on the deepest thoughts of America, unfiltered -- intense, sort of like mainlining a speedball, or, er -- heh heh, or so I've heard. Look at this one:

"i am a nurse and sometimes i fake the blood pressures because i forgot to take them at the right times. nobody has died yet, but i need to stop doing it.

The Corsair has this theory about Americans. Evangelical Christianity does so well here because we are all essentially freaks in search of redemption -- of one kind or another, after the Puritains and, then, each of our ancestral immigrants. Think: Jerry Springer-- what other country could have produced him? My theory is that David Lynch is not some surreal fabulist, but, no, actually, a realist. Grouphug bears this theory out.

Some choice chestnuts, like this:

"Im in love with a man I cannot be with, and some days, I find my self wanting to leave my children with my exhusband and running off with him, but I feel bad cause I know it would make me a bad mother, but I just want some happiness."

Pretty tame, very desperate suburban housewives, no? This is what The Corsair might expect from an Upper Middle class 42 year old housewife from Germantown, Pennsylvania. But let's turn the corner from the suburbs, and go into a duskier nook and cranny into Americana:

"... I made brownies for him, and added some of my menstrual blood to the batter. This is a voodoo spell - a man who consumes a woman's menstrual blood belongs to her. Now, some folks would say that would backfire, or that I would not want a man who did not come to me of his own will...But I believe that in any magick the most important ingredient is intention.

"In this case, I think of it as solidifying the connection that is already there, but tenuous. I honestly don't think I could override his own will.

"But there is little I would not do to get this man to marry me."

We're trending away from the inocuous and into the opaque American consciousness, like.

"i work in retail, and whenever i see people pay with foodstamps, i feel like punching them in the face for taking my tax money "


Darker. But This one really freaked me out; drive deep along the Lost Highway of Americana, and we get to this unsavory destination:

"I dissolved three types of poisons into my best friends drink to see what would happen. He's in the hospitol for 'consumpsion of water'"

Then make a left turn at Loughville, and we get here:

"i killed a man at night. errr..further explanation:i was driving along some highway in colorado (coming home from a ski trip with my church) and it got kinda dark. i saw a car pulled to the side of the road with no lights on. i assumed someone was inside it sleeping or had been picked up by a friend or something.but that's not what happened. i assume the owner of the vehicle is the guy i hit..hopefully i killed him anyway. i was maybe 5 miles over the speed limit on a sharp curve when i saw the guy crossing the highway to avoid walking in deep snow. before i knew it my tires were screeching and i was all over the road.

"i positioned my in such a way i could find the guy with my headlights. he wasn't moving or breathing and didn't have a pulse.

"i won't describe the way his neck had twisted or how fucked up his legs were. instead, i just dragged him off the road and burried him in lots of snow...i got back to the church the next day and confessed to the priest in the confessional.

"this was all about 2 years ago and i don't know if i should go to the police or not.i still think i'm going to hell."

WTF?!

But then, just when you lose all hope in humanity and become skeptical about the future of humankind, something like this pops us:

"I just spent all weekend at the hospital. My 'girlfriend' had an anaphylactic attack due to something she ate. She almost died. She was literally 2 minutes from dying hadthe paramedics not gotten there in time. Never have I been so close to losing someone I loved in my life. I guess it just opened my eyes and let me see how much I really care for her. It was hard to sit there and watch her hooked up to IV's and getting shots. She was in pain and I wished I could have done more than just being there to help her.I'm so glad she is doing ok now. She was released from the hospital last night. I'm in class right now and I can't wait to get out of here to go see her.

"Amanda I love you."