Sure, I expected to find confessional teenage “salty tears on my pillow” type statements… and yes, there were some “I love Trevor from my Language Arts Class” proclamations. But the sentiments on Lovelines, anonymous and without context, elicit a sense of shared vulnerability. It’s a forum to express love, like, indifference, dislike or hate, yet, none of the authors are aware that generating the content for Lovelines.

Using a sophisticated data search engine created by artist and web developers Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar, Lovelines scours blogs every few minutes and picks out statements of desire. And in a web-society where metrics are king, the search engine also remembers the age, gender and location of each blogger.

The range between love and hate are explored in three different ways, or three “movements” as the artists describe them: Words, Pictures and Superlatives. On the bottom of the interface is a slider with a draggable heart that becomes scratched out as you approach Hate.

The creators have said that “We realize that the heart of all fixations is the desire to own, possess, and consume”. In creating Lovelines, they allow all participants in the site to share in a collective online experience of desire.

Lovelines was created for Oral Fixation Mints, those lovely breath mints that come in equally lovely tins.