if you came here looking for the unsent project
unsent messages, said out loud
you were probably looking for messages people wrote to someone and never sent. that is a real thing and it is worth reading. this is the same impulse in a different medium: the message is spoken, and you hear the person say it.
the difference
- written
- the words, edited until they are the right ones
- spoken
- the words, and where the person stopped
an unsent text is the words. a recording is the words plus everything the writing leaves out — where the person stopped, what they could not finish, how long they took before starting. people say things out loud that they would not write down, and they say them differently.
it also means you cannot edit it into something better than what you meant. a voice note is closer to the thing itself than a message drafted eleven times ever gets.
how this works
you record straight into the browser, address it to a first name, and it joins a public archive after it has been checked. there are no accounts and no replies. the person it is addressed to almost certainly never hears it, and that is the arrangement rather than a shortcoming. more about how it works.
not affiliated
if this finds you is not connected to the unsent project or to anyone who runs it. this page exists because the two answer overlapping questions and a reader deserves to know which one they have found.