‘We Live in Public’ — A Reaction
The 2009 film ‘We Live in Public’ is a prediction of how our society would live in the future with our technology, and while the themes in the it represents the chaos of the age of the Internet and social media. Of course, the personal lives we live are (hopefully) not as intense or sadistic as are portrayed in the film, but it shows the ways we are vulnerable when given freedom for the price of our privacy, which the themes of the film symbolize heavily.
At first glance, it all seems unparalleled, especially at the beginning. For ‘Quiet: We Live in Public,’ an insane mix of cultist, fascist anarchist allusions are thrown haphazardly into a blender by online visionary (and insane person) Josh Harris, showing that, with these capabilities of the Internet, we will all be able to reach fifteen minutes of fame. Not all people do, of course, but the crazy things online users say or do for those fifteen minutes are evident, because we are all more than capable of it. It all comes at a cost, of course, but it remains hidden from our conscious. Even those who don’t post many photos, videos, or any other such information are still selling their information with the countless sites they visit, the software they use — it’s nearly unavoidable, unless you want to live under a metaphorical rock. Everything is free. You just have one price to pay: your privacy. You might as well be filming yourself using the toilet.
At the time of the film’s recording (2009), things like Snapchat and TikTok didn’t exist, which nowadays encourages users to film large amounts of their lives in small, digestible chunks, and even though the catch for Snapchat is the “ephemeral” nature of the photos and videos, it’s obvious that anything that goes on the Internet stays there, with permission or not. Anything has potential to be permanent; you can’t merely wipe it away and forget it ever happened. The Internet will see it, and remember it, whether you like it or not.
Privacy alone is not the issue; there is also the monumental effect on relationships, friendships, connections, jobs — anything in our life can be affected, manipulated, or changed by the way we use social media and the Internet. Even the ways we portray ourselves can be manipulated to show ourselves in our best light, while the “ugly stuff” (e.g. mistakes and harmful things we say) can seep out unexpectedly at anytime and corrupt that image, which begs the question: who are we really?
How we discuss things online and take part in discourse, also suffers from how we’re viewed in the online public. Much of it becomes about winning and appearance, where ego is more important when others (potentially hundreds, thousands) are watching, instead of resolving conflict or inciting discussion. Our basis of self-worth also becomes dependent more on who’s watching us, how many views, followers, retweets, and likes we get. It’s less about our own reflections of who we are, but based on what the Internet says about us, our lives, our work, and our hobbies. And if you’re not on social media, not participating in that surplus of cognition that has been created from the Internet, you’re an outcast to that public.
Social media doesn’t just mediate binary and hex values, strings of text, and photo processing anymore. The internet mediates our relationships, our goals and our dreams, none of which are encouraged to be held private, but rather flaunted out in the open, vulnerable to any opposition or harm. It speaks to how many young people in newer generations are disassociating from social media, because when mishandled (or even when it’s not), it can slowly take away parts of your subconscious, your privacy and your life as you know it. Great positives come from the Internet and social media; greater means of expression, communication, community, information, and leisure. There is a trade-off, one we are too comfortable to notice or acknowledge most of the time. This price of privacy is worth it for most of us, but it has consequences, and even if there’s little we can do about it in this day and age, we can be cognizant of the consequences, as well as how we got here to begin with.
