What We Learned From “We Live in Public”
After watching “We live in Public” there are a few takeaways I have from it that can apply to our lives in the current day.
When people know they are being recorded, they will act differently and may portray themselves in a different way to either gain more attention or hide from it. They also may become narcissistic, or obsessive over how other people perceive them. A person may also develop other negative effects that we saw in the documentary like depression.
Many of the internet stars that gain traction quickly on the internet tend to struggle to maintain their fanbase and attention. This can lead to breakdowns like we saw in the documentary and a compulsive obsessiveness over what they have to do to stay in the spotlight.
Public observation is a key aspect of the documentary. This documentary really was ahead of its time as technology has advanced, we as the public give out more and more information to the internet and the companies that run it.
“Everything is free except the video we capture of you”
This quote by Josh Harris in the documentary has demolished the test of time. Whenever you go on a website, it will ask if you like to save “cookies” on that specific website. They get to keep your information. Another way it’s done is through ad personalization on various social media apps. I will always get suspiciously close ads minutes after I talk about a brand/product to a friend. Social media is free, many websites we go on to are free, but the information they gather on us is not.
The constant supervision/streaming of daily life is something we see nowadays on Twitch, a streaming platform. These streamers can receive donations and whoever donates makes a sound on the stream. Well, this one guy was streaming while sleeping, and whoever woke him up with the sound after a donation won a special prize. This exemplifies the limits people will go to get internet clout/fame. People will defriend one another in a heartbeat for some fame on the internet, to people they barely know.
This documentary was way ahead of its time, everything Josh Harris endured was a preceding to the issues we face in society today surrounding the internet and social media.
