What is Postcrossing?
Postcrossing is a free (donation-powered) non-profit web platform to connect people around the world and match potential senders and recipients randomly. Online profile pages tell preferences, hobbies and no-gos. Some have long lists, some don’t seem to mind much, open-minded and happy to receive anything in their real-life mailbox.
Postcrossing can track sent cards and compile collages and slideshows of sent, received and favourite postcard frontsides as an archive and inspiration. The flipsides, names, addresses and personal dedications always remain secret.
Postcrossing can inspire us to connect and rediscover the joy of sending and receiving actual mail around the world. Sounds a little irrelevant, but still fun, even more so in a world where our daily lives are already influenced by digital social media platforms controlled by AI and algorithms. Handwritten paper postcards with postmarks that have travelled the world and got delivered by a human being to your door, maybe still with a mixture of scents from the room where they were written and all the places that they have been in between.
What makes people love postcards?
I have lived in different cities and found inspiration meeting people while traveling and doing business offline and online. As a web developer, I use digital communication a lot. Still, printed paper is something that you can hold in your hand, touch and smell, and it’s still there even where there are no working electric devices turned on. You can write and draw with colorful pens, decipher individual handwritings and international alphabets (some postcrossers prefer senders to write in their native language for the sake of originality and diversity).
Each card feels like a fragment of a larger story, a glimpse into someone’s life, their hobbies, their work, their everyday world. It’s a bit like reading many tiny books written by real people. However, it’s a just a tiny fragment that you get, and it takes only a little effort to choose, write and send a postcard with a similar glimpse to someone else. You can also send friendly wishes and good news to spread happiness around the world.
Many postcards are beautiful small artworks, collagaes, drawings, contemporary and historic photography.
Pros and Cons: Reasons not to Take Part
I can imagine several reasons why you might not want to do it. Maybe you don’t care about postcards at all. Maybe you are worried about safety or fear disappointment or fail to find a good postcard that would make another person happy or inspired. Maybe you have no money to spare. Maybe you have no permanent address. In my experience, there are three main reasons for not taking part in an exchange of letters or postcards.
How can you Receive Postcards without a Permanent Postal Address?
Most people need a permanent postal address for business and legal reasons. When you don’t have a permanent postal address, maybe you know a friend or there is post box or a shared c/o address at work.
Possible Dangers and how to use Postcrossing safely?
What could possibly go wrong in the worst case anyway? The platform seems to enforce their strict guidelines successfully: I have never seen images of postcard text sides. The postal addresses are only revealed once you get a match. There is no official public address directory, and new members can only see up to five new addresses at the same time. Still, anyone can sign up, and servers could get hacked. Alias post office boxes, friend’s or work locations might be an alternative to exposing your private postal address.
Alias, Nicknames, P.O. Boxes and Community Guidelines
Many people use nicknames or abbreviations, specific enough that the cards can reach their destination, but without giving away too many personal details.
There are some countries and situations where your mail might be monitored and suspicious activity might endanger your carreer or even cause harassment and prosecution for receiving unlawful material, LGBTQ+ content or criticism of the government. Postcrossing’s community guidelines are against political or religious propaganda and hate speech. Usually, Postcrossing members try to respect your preferences and not choose opinionated artwork or wording, but you never know. However, this is not a Postcrossing-specific problem, but it applies to any international mail, both on paper and on digital channels. People living in authoritarian states or other high-surveillance environments know this risk already.
Can Postcards cause Deception?
Disappointment is another, underrated but quite likely, risk of emotional danger. After several good experiences and positive recommendations, people might start to expect and rely on pleasant surprises, but there can be unpleasant ones as well, even if not intended as such. A beautiful postcard might trigger sad memories of a place or a person, or something meant funny might feel offensive.
We might develop unreasonably high expectations as sender, trying to fulfil wishes too perfectly and write a unique personal text for every recipient. In this case, remember these are not close friends or relatives, and it is just a hobby.
Pros and Cons: what’s cool about Postcrossing
Accessible and Constrained Intimacy
By default, the stakes are quite low though, and I think that’s a good thing for several reasons.
Contacts are relatively simple and restricted, making the project very accessible for everyone who can read and write.
Bad choices of motives and wording won’t hurt too much as long as you know it’s just one out of many random connections and most of them will either be just nice or an unexpected pleasant surprise.
If you absolutely want to connect beyond a single once-in-a-lifetime postcard, you can still do that online later, provided the other person is also open for a deeper connection. Postcrossing also has an option to request or endorse direct shares to turn your random 1:1 stranger contact into a potential long-time pen-pal relationship. You can state it on your profile and include your return address on postcards.
Miniature Storytelling
You might even start to see your own world with different eyes, even if you don’t live at a special place full of artisan boutiques or underground artist studios.
Imagine receiving a postcard from a beautiful lake in Japan and drawing a recipient in Taiwan who likes knitting and drawing inspired by a popular comic character that you never heard about before. Let’s say their favourite color is teal and they would love to receive picturess of vintage umbrellas. When you go for a walk to town later, you start to notice that there is an umbrella shop that you hardly ever noticed before and that one of your neighbors rides a teal colored bicylce. You wonder what sets vintage umbrellas apart from modern ones and remember a picture of the actor Charlie Chaplin posing and dancing with an umbrella.
Although my digital wall of currently less than fourty sent, and another fourty received postcards, is quite small, I was astonished to learn that it was so much already. Some people have sent and received several thousand postcards already. That’s not necessarily nerdy, that’s open-minded! Especially, if, for some reason, you can’t travel the world beause you have a lot of work, little money, or care for a sick or elderly family member. Choosing and writing cards is creative, and every incoming card is like the blurb of another new book. That stimulates the imagination much more than watching television or streaming series.
If I made you curious, get inspired and give it a try!
