Confession good for the soul – and Twitter account...
CONFESSION is good for the soul, so the saying goes – and it certainly makes riveting reading.
Ask Rob Manuel, the Black Country man behind a viral Twitter account which sees thousands of people confess their sins anonymously.
Mr Manuel combs through 200 confessions a day sent in by people hoping to make an appearance on his popular Twitter account Fesshole.
They send in their darkest secrets before he mulls over which ones are interesting or funny enough to make it online. The 48-year-old, from Wolverhampton, has received 150,000 confessions of awkward run-ins, cruel admissions and embarrassing secrets.
But not everything makes the cut for the father-of-four’s 650,000 followers, with the fabricated or even creepy stories missing out.
One viral tweet read: “I have been working as a press photographer for 15 years.
“I have no idea how to use a camera. I put it in automatic mode and hope for the best. I’ve won two national awards from Press Associations with photos I got lucky with. I’ve made a great living from something I can’t do.”
Mr Manuel, who works in marketing, thought his account would be an instant success. The shocking, yet relatable confessions caught on quickly and are now shared and liked by thousands every week.
It all started when Mr Manuel used an open invitation from his personal account to ask people to make their anonymous confessions three years ago.
After receiving 100 submissions, he revealed them on the Fesshole Twitter page. He said: “Lockdown happened and the account grew really well. Everyone was bored and one of the things about the pandemic and lockdown was many of us just weren’t creating any stories at that moment we were sitting at home and I felt it was almost nostalgia for when we had great stories.”
One of the early confessions, which had 36,000 likes, was: “My husband’s dying wish was to make people think he led a double life. We had three blacked-out Land Rovers follow the corsage and had actors in suits and trench coats as the funeral conductors. He was a bank manager for TSB. To this day, we haven’t told anyone the truth”.”
He even gets confessions of historic murders or sexual encounters but chooses not to reveal those. Mr Manuel added: “I work with my own gut feeling.
“The stuff I don’t publish is because I think it would be wrong to put it in front of a large audience.
“I’m just looking for anything funny or interesting; that makes you laugh or gasp. The core of it is observational comedy. Observational
comedy with the added richness of going, ‘is this is real?’ And we’re sort of recognising we are to some degree, imperfect.”
Comedian Adam Kay, as well as personalities such as food critic Jay Rayner and journalist Piers Morgan, are said to be fans.
The father-of-three has made a compilation of the best tweets into his debut book – The Very Best of Fesshole.