We Live In Public

When I first saw this documentary several years ago, I was shocked at how accurate and mostly terrifying the reality of the “social” life may really become. The story follows the life of Josh Harris, a cross between Mark Zuckerburg and Andy Warhol, and his wild success as a pre-dot-com entrepreneur, dot-com entrepreneur and through the experimental phase of “Quiet: We Live in Public” and later his relational broadcast of weliveinpublic.com.

Both of these experiments explore the human response to endless publication of their lives on television/film and later on the Internet. It would be easy to largely dismiss the contents of this documentary under the title: “Psychoanalysis of a narcissist, egomaniac–Josh Harris,” but that would miss some of the chilling foreshadowing of the experiments on our modern social sphere.

At one point, Harris says of the Quiet experiment in a chilling Faustian tone:

“Everything is free… except the video that we capture of you. THAT we own.”

Those words have an ominous echo throughout the film. The participants in the experience were afforded all of the accouterments of hedonism in exchange for their images, their reactions…their lives recorded and catalogued–not too dissimilar from our current photos, posts, and shares.

What intrigues me most, and obviously was at the heart the documentarian Ondi Timoner‘s quest into Josh Harris’s life: what did these experiments tell us about our social sphere today?

As we thumb through our Facebook timelines, we see people “freely” sharing intimate details about their lives. Sometimes we peer deep beyond the image of our friends into the very telling observations that they make about the world as we see their check-ins, step-outs, break-ups, and make-ups. In fact, we’ve even seen the very public RU-486 abortion of Angie Jackson shared to the whole world.

So, without the contrived mounting of hundreds of cameras throughout our homes (as Harris did in the weliveinpublic.com experiment), we do carry our own broadcast studios in our pockets that can, with seconds notice, publish every secret detail of our lives.

All of this sharing is in the name of “social” media is much like the presumption of “social” in Harris’s public house. However, the harsh reality is that Harris seems like an Antarctic pioneer–alone, cold and lost.

While my experience with social has far different results, most of my “virtual” relationships have resulted in rich, real human interactions. The fear lingers that some may find themselves adrift on that Antarctic shore of social desolation.

We do increasingly live in public.


Jeremy Floyd

Jeremy Floyd is the President at FUNYL Commerce. Formerly, he was the CEO and President of Lirio, Bluegill Creative, a marketing and communications firm in Knoxville, Tennessee. In addition to managing the digital strategies, Floyd was an adjunct professor for the University of Tennessee Chattanooga MBA program teaching digital strategies and social media. Floyd blogs at jeremyfloyd.com and tweets under the name @jfloyd. Jeremy is licensed to practice law in the State of Tennessee and holds a law degree from the University of Tennessee College of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree from MTSU in English and Philosophy.

  • mpchang423

    I definitely agree with your analysis in decribing the similarities in how digital media has evolved into a version of what Josh Harris envisioned it would become. While this paradigm has surely resulted in rich , real human interaction with some, my observations tell me that that is not true with the majority. Too many times I have seen a group of people standing around one another, each with every ounce of attention into their mobile devices. While each one may feel more connected to those within their primary group, that one misses the opportunity of real human interaction that is right in front of them.

  • Unfortunately, this is abundantly true with parents, and I’m not just pointing the finger at others here. It’s easier to escape into a world of instant gratification than making the investment into real, human conversation. On the other hand, I have benefitted from some rich IRL relationships that resulted exclusively from my digital relationships.

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