What’s your deepest, darkest secret? For me, you don’t have to dig deep. I accidentally stole some party masks once. Due to the sheer excitement (or daunting social anxiety) of actually throwing a party, I forgot to unclench them from my fist as we passed through the checkout. My sister realised once we got to the car and made me feel so, so bad. That moment is etched clearly in my memory some 20 years later and I can still feel the burning shame.

If you’ve lived a little bit more than me, a new art project called CONFESSION is inviting you to open up. Co-founded by Brooklyn-based Gideon Jacobs and Gregor Hochmuh, Jacobs explains over email, “It's a combo of Post Secret and Chat Roulette, with just a little Catholicism sprinkled on top.” He continues, "We came up with the idea together over lunch. I had just been browsng the deep dark corners of the internet  (i.e. Yelp Reviews of prisons, Craigslist rants and raves) while working on a project called Accidental Internet. As I read and clicked around, it dawned on me what a huge percentage of the internet's UGC is confessional by nature. Most people think that the anonymity of the web mostly fosters bad behaviour, like trolling and bullying, but this anonymity can also allow people to get stuff off their chest without consequences.”

“Most people think that the anonymity of the web mostly fosters bad behaviour, like trolling and bullying, but this anonymity can also allow people to get stuff off their chest without consequences” – Gideon Jacobs

With CONFESSION, basically, you phone a number and dial one of two options, 1) to confess or 2) to be confessed to. No need to put on your Sunday’s best. No need to even wait for Sunday.

So I called in, waited for 17 minutes, listened to a lot of classical music of varying tempos and emotions – at one point, a hybrid of classical and electro, which was quite unique – but sadly no one joined me on the other end to confess anything. Perhaps everything had been confessed, I thought. Perhaps nobody did anything too sinful today (that’s good, I also thought to myself).

However, I'm reassured by Jacobs and Hochmuh that they’ve already had a deluge of calls (3,000 last night, Jacobs reveals), some confessions have been light and some really heavy, and with no end date for the project in sight, you’re free to sin (disclaimer: sin lightly, please) and confess for as long as you wish. With confessions anonymously recorded, the duo also tell me that if they ever make the confessions public, all voices will be altered and distorted.

“I think this project's popularity is indicative of some acute feelings of loneliness and isolation that pervade our culture. And one of the most brutal aspects of loneliness and isolation is shouldering the burden of your secrets, your doubts and you guilt. Greg and I had a hypothesis, that people everywhere were craving catharsis via repentance – a practice found in many religions, of course. This project was basically an experiment to test that hypothesis,” explains Jacobs.

So, now I’ve told mine, what’s Jacobs’ darkest secret? “When I was a kid, and I found myself alone in the elevator of the building I grew up in, I used to pull down my pants for just a second or two, just for the thrill. Never told ANYONE that before, EVER.”

Confess your sins here