About

Each time you pull the string, one creation is selected at random from what strangers have left here.

You won’t know what it is until you receive it. There are no categories to choose from, and nothing to search for.

Someone left something here for a stranger to find.

This time, that stranger happened to be you.

The red string is a small nod to an old East Asian belief that people whose paths are meant to cross are connected by an unseen thread.

The stories around it vary. At the heart of them is a simple idea: somewhere at the other end, there is another person.

What you find isn’t decided by popularity.

There are no public likes, rankings, follower counts, or recommendations deciding what comes next. The Shelf doesn’t learn what you like and show you more of it.

Everything left here gets a fair chance to be found.

You pull the string without knowing what’s waiting.

Not everything needs a profile attached to it.

You decide how much of yourself comes with what you leave. No backstory required.

What you make can stand on its own.

It doesn’t have to fit neatly into a category.

Finished or unfinished. Serious or silly. Carefully planned or made on a whim.

It can be polished, rough around the edges, strange, ordinary, or somewhere in between.

The Shelf has room for different things.

The Shelf is here to be stumbled upon.

If someone comes to mind, send it their way.

That’s really all there is to it.

Everything submitted to A Stranger’s Shelf is reviewed before it can be found.

Share something you created yourself, be thoughtful about what you leave for another person, and don’t include private information you wouldn’t want a stranger to have.