We Live in Public Reflection
Watching “We Live in Public” in class was both an interesting and almost frustrating experience. In the beginning, I found Josh Harris’ persona to be inspiring and creative. He always wanted to progress and do something different. I admired Josh’s ability to drop everything and start a new project if the previous one didn’t work out. Although most of the class’s body language suggested they thought Quiet was rather weird, I actually think it was a beautiful and unique social experiment. If I had the opportunity to be a part of something like Quiet, I would have loved to be a part of it. The only part I didn’t think was appropriate was him questioning the participants independently with rather intrusive questions. I feel as if I liked the beginning/first half of the social experiment more than the end. I am a pretty quiet and reserved person, but if I was with one person that I really trusted, I think I could handle the project’s situation well. There is already no privacy in my house, so it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if other people were watching me. I almost feel like it would be helpful to myself in a way, realizing and finding comfort in that others do all of the same stuff I do.
The sense of power that “Oz” had in Quiet was intriguing, but also slightly scary in the fact that he had a lot of control over this group of people. Watching the participants change in behavior throughout the project was also interesting to me. The group seemed to be more free and open with others, but also more annoyed with some of the other members of the project. This makes a lot of sense though, if it was completely normal for these people to see me using the bathroom, having sex, and showering, I would probably be more open with them. The yearning to be noticed or have their “15 min of fame” in Quiet is very much so how people are on social media today. Harris defiantly predicted a big part of how people act on various social media platforms, such as Youtube and TikTok. You can’t scroll through TikTok for a minute without seeing someone doing a ridiculous act in order for people to notice them. In Quiet, the competition for being noticed became stronger as the month went on. As time goes on now, the same idea is more than present. A lot of the crazy stunts people are doing have already been done before, so nowadays the competition has even gotten stronger. People were literally eating tide pods for views a couple years ago. It is both scary and entertaining to see where these trends for “15 minutes of fame” will go in the future.
Although a smaller project, I found Josh’s experiment with him and his girlfriend to be the most interesting. However, I do think the project was toxic to their relationship. I could never imagine having hundreds of people watching me and my boyfriend living together. To me, my relationships are supposed to be private and I would be really uncomfortable with others watching our every move. With Quiet, the only other people that were watching were the participants in the project, but it’s kind of impossible to build solid connections with random people on the internet who can watch at any time. I would find it easier to be a part of Quiet because I know I would get to know the people in the project. With his internet experiment with him and his girlfriend, he had no idea who was watching.
I will say I agree with the classes view of Josh towards the end, where he just kept failing and trying new projects he didn’t have the money for. While I respect his motivation and ability to not give up, I am frustrated with the fact that he just kept trying something completely different, instead of just sticking with what he likes and is good at, computer science/television.
