There is something you haven't told anyone, and you'd like someone to hear it. Tell a friend and they'll ask how it's going every time they see you. Put it on your story and you can picture exactly who will see it, and what their face will do. So you start wanting a stranger: someone who has never met you, reading it in a letter.
If you went looking for a way to write to a stranger anonymously, you probably already know what you'd say. What you're deciding is where: a post on Reddit, a Discord server, an app built for it. And then what to keep back once you're there.
Without your name, more fits on the page
Wanting to write anonymously doesn't mean you have something to hide. It's that when the reader doesn't know you, nothing you write can change how the people around you see you. That alone takes a surprising amount of weight off.
I don't think I'm cut out for this job is hard to say to anyone at work. I don't want to move back home is hard to say to the friends who stayed. The people closest to you were there before you said it and will still be there after, and something between you shifts the moment it's out. A stranger has only the words.
It's the same reason people still write to advice columns and sign off Tired in Leeds. Leaving your name off isn't hiding so much as putting down, for a minute, everything that comes attached to it. What's left is usually more honest than you expected.
One thing, though: anonymous isn't a costume. Add a few years to your age or invent a breakup that never happened, and the letters get exhausting fast, because now there's a character to keep up. Keep your name and where you are to yourself. Write what's true. Do that and anonymity is easy to live in.
A letter also doesn't need answering straight away, the way a message does. Take a day. The slowness is part of what makes honesty easier.
Two places to start
You can post your own ad somewhere people look for penpals, or you can use an app that sits between you and the stranger.
Posting your own is free and fast. A subreddit like r/penpals, a Discord server for letter-writers, one of the long-running penpal sites: you write a post and choose from whoever answers. The trade-off is that nobody stands between the two of you. What to share, what to keep, where to draw the line: you decide all of it, and nobody else steps in if someone pushes.
An app can take some of that off your hands, though how much varies a lot. For the other places people look, from paper clubs to language-exchange apps, see how to find a penpal.
If you post on r/penpals, or anywhere like it
People do find good penpals there. Whether you do comes down mostly to the post, and to what you keep back once people start writing.
Give them something to answer, not a bio
22F, uni student, anyone want to be penpals? gets you a pile of messages that say hey and nothing else. There's nothing in it to answer.
Looking for a slow penpal. Every few days is fine, I'm not fast either. No names and no socials, at least for a while. Lately I've been getting off the bus a stop early and walking the rest of the way, mostly so I can finish a song. If you message me, start with your last detour: somewhere you went that you didn't strictly need to.
Put the pace and the no-names part first, and the people who want something else drift off on their own. The prompt sorts the rest: you can tell at once who answered it and who sent hey.
Four things to watch
- Don't stack identifying details. Your age, your city, your school, your job: each is harmless on its own. Together they narrow you down to a handful of people. Early twenties, somewhere near the sea is plenty. Posts stay up long after you've forgotten them, and on Reddit your post history is usually one click from your username.
- Use an account that doesn't lead back to you. A throwaway Reddit account, a Discord name you use nowhere else, an email address with no name in it. If someone can get from your handle to your Instagram, you're not anonymous any more.
- Don't rush onto another app. When someone asks to move to Snapchat, Instagram or WhatsApp two or three messages in, slow down. Your display name, your photo and sometimes your phone number come with you, and the letters turn into ordinary chat on an app you open all day. If letters are what you wanted, there's no hurry.
- If money comes up, that's the end. Postage, a gift card, an emergency, a crypto thing their cousin did very well out of. No exceptions, however lovely they seem.
There are quieter signs too. Being asked for photos. Compliments that are bigger than anything you've actually written. A small guilt trip when you're slow to reply. You can stop writing at any of them, and you don't owe a stranger an explanation. More on all of this in writing to strangers safely.
Choosing an anonymous penpal app
Plenty of apps call themselves anonymous. Ignore the word and look at what the app actually does. Four tests:
- Can anyone see your real name or your face? If your real name shows, or a profile photo is required, it's anonymous in the marketing and nowhere else. Photos plus swiping is a dating app, whatever it calls itself.
- Are letters to strangers checked before they arrive? If a letter trying to swap contact details or ask for money is stopped before anyone reads it, much of the watching you'd do yourself on a forum is done for you.
- Can you block and report on the spot? From the letter you're reading, without hunting through menus. And once you've blocked someone, can they really never reach you again?
- Is it 18+? If it's adults-only, the app has drawn at least one line for you before anyone writes a word.
If an app fails any of the four, treat it like a forum: the looking-after is yours.
Make the first letter small and true
The easiest way to waste an anonymous letter is to leave your name off and then leave everything else off too. Hi, I'm in my twenties, I work in an office, I like films, nice to meet you gives a stranger nothing to pick up.
Write one small thing from this week. Add one sentence that goes slightly further than you'd usually go with a stranger. End on a single question.
Someone ahead of me on the platform dropped a glove this morning and didn't notice. I picked it up and chased them halfway up the stairs, and when I handed it over they looked at it like I'd found something they'd lost years ago. They said thank you twice. It kept me in a good mood all morning, probably longer than it kept them in one. I'm not sure anyone's thanked me for anything since about June. When did someone last thank you for something?
No name, no city, no job. It's still, unmistakably, one particular person's letter. The shape of a first letter, and twelve lines to open one with, are in your first letter to a penpal. From the second letter on, there are sixty-six questions to ask a penpal.
Sometimes nobody writes back. You can't see their side: a hard week, a reply half-written when they fell asleep. Give it a week, then write to someone else, and don't keep a tally of the ones that never came back.
About Kindredly
Kindredly is a free anonymous penpal app on iPhone and the web. You write a letter to nobody in particular, and a courier bird carries it off. It lands first on the desks of strangers who write the way you do. No profiles, no photos, no swiping.
- A stranger sees a number, like No. 4207, and a face made of squares.
- After five letters each way, the two of you can trade names if you both want to. Or never.
- Letters to strangers pass a safety check before they're delivered.
- Anyone can be reported or blocked in a tap, and three reports from different people stop a writer automatically.
- It's for adults only, 18 and over.
- Fifteen letters from strangers on your desk a day, five new letters of your own a day, and no limit on replies inside a correspondence.
- Ten languages, with a translate button on the desk.
The rest is in how it works, safety and talking to strangers by letter.
It's a small thing, writing to someone whose name you don't know with yours left off. You may still find you get up from it a little lighter than you sat down. Wherever you write it, start with something true.