WE LIVE IN PUBLIC SUMMARY AND REFLECTION
Josh Harris has to be one of the most thought-provoking and mysterious individuals that I have ever learned about. Growing up through the 1960s and 70s, Josh Harris lived a life that many kids in his era most likely lived as well. He grew a close connection to his family’s television set and consumed television media more than anything else throughout his childhood. It is mentioned through the documentary, Quite: We Live in Public that the show Gilligan’s Island intrigued and captured Josh more than any other piece of media. He identified with the show and thought of himself as a part of the fictitious family in which was portrayed. He felt more apart of the television family than his own real life family.
Josh’s love and obsession over the consumption of media continued to drive his life even as he became an adult in the 1980s and 1990s. During this time period, there was a brand new phenomenon in culture and media that caused the economy to boom in speculation of what could be. This phenomenon was indeed the internet and Josh was one of the first pioneers and adopters of the internet, creating a website domain called pseudo.com where live internet broadcast shows were produced and streamed to audiences on the internet. He made a modest fortune from this website but he wanted more meaning from his work so he sold the website pseudo.com and embarked on a new “Art Project”.
This “Art Project” as Josh Harris called it, was actually a social experiment. Josh recruited 100+ people to come to a bunker in which he constructed in New York City. These people lived in the bunker for 30 days, being allowed to do whatever they wanted to do except for leave. There was much social interaction and activities to take part in mostly vulgar and revelrous. There was one catch though as Josh put it — “Everything is free. Except for the video in which we take of you. That we own”. As a part of this experiment, everyone in the bunker was being video taped, broadcasted to eachother’s “pods”, and broadcasted to the public. There was zero privacy. Josh wanted to find out what happened to people and their mental states and lifestyles when they know they are being watched at all times. Eventually, the people within the bunker became very wild and did not care what they laid out for the public to see. By the 30th day of the experiment, NYC police found the bunker to be unsafe and hectic and shut it down. However, Josh Harris wanted to keep the concept alive. He truly believed that what he was doing was a true experiment and precursor to what life would be like for humans as the internet continued to take over and change the way humans think and identify with themselves and the world around them. Josh continued the experiment on his own life within his own house with his fiancée. They lived in public with cameras broadcasting every moment of their private lives together. Eventually this affected their egos and mental health and Josh and his fiancée separated. He would go on for a few months living in public only to cease as his mental, personal, and financial health gave way. He went on the become a farmer living in solitude.
Josh Harris’s experiment is a valid and interesting metaphor to life on social media and the potential effects of the internet on society. His mind grasped concepts and ideas that were definitely ahead of his time and I think he consumed, studied, and researched media pieces so much that he understood that humans have an endless appetite for social interaction and media in general. He may have been desensitized to human emotion and ethical treatment due to the sheer amount of time he spent analyzing and relating to fictional media characters but I still think Josh Harris was an amazing mind who understood the effects of media consumption and constant social connectedness.
- Caden Hendrickson, Juniata College ’23, IMA + Marketing
