I’ve just finished watching ‘We Live In Public‘ and it was one of the most confusing documentaries I’ve ever watched. More4 had been advertising this film to death and the trailers looked quite interesting plus I’ve always been interested in topics about internet privacy and the evolution of the internet in everyday life.
The documentary was about Josh Harris, a guy I’d never heard about and neither did some of the CEO’s he tried pitching a product to at the end of the program which led to a quite embarrassing scene. I’m still not sure what the product was all about as the documentary seemed to be running out of time and suddenly sped up covering whole events and subjects in just a few sentences. Josh is described a bit of a visionary, although I’m unsure whether he made the statement about himself.
I lost interest within the first few minutes when I realised that Jason Calacanis was playing a major role in it and kept giving his opinion on everything. I have never liked anything he’s read or written before and this hasn’t changed my mind. For some reason I find the man truly unlikable. Julia Allison‘s brief appearance towards the end didn’t help either.
20% of Americans consume fast food every day. 50% of Americans consume social networking sites every day.
The entire documentary was a mess. There was no substance, it just jumped all over the place and I found it difficult concentrating on it which is where I briefly switched away during the first hour and watched the end of a Miss Marple film I enjoyed more.
Overall it focussed on what Josh had done and how he was allegedly a visionary about the internet and, I suppose, people in general. At some point in the late nineties he had created some sort of bunker underneath New York City and invited people to stay there with the full knowledge that everything would be filmed. Basically a Big Brother before Big Brother. From the videos it seemed to be a mix between the Stanford Prison experiment and some S&M sex party. Josh was in the middle of it all and his calmness was pointed out more than once, even when there was a seemingly disturbing scene happening right in front of him.
Unsurprisingly police intervened once they found out about it and it led to a confrontation between Josh and some young woman who was either on drugs or drunk or tired when he took her arm to take her out of the building. It was an uncomfortable watch, especially with the voiceover stating that Josh had become bored with the experiment anyway.
Randomly the documentary moves on to his next idea which is installing webcams all over his flat, including his bathroom that would transmit content 24 hours a day without editing. That’s where we learned that he has a phone in the bathroom which also seems to be his favourite place to talk to his mum. All phone conversations are recorded, as well as his entire life and marriage. This only makes him even more unlikable as he ends up having an altercation with his wife which turns violent and leads to her moving out. At least I think so, although they never show it. Perfect timing anyway as he yet again had enough of the experiment and suddenly seemed to be down on his luck.
There was a moment in time where I was worth 50 million dollars, now I’m negative.
He calls up some other unknown people I’m assuming I’m meant to know who also don’t know him and tries to pitch some products to some people about something. He also pitches to the MySpace CEO which led to the uncomfortable scene mentioned earlier.
The documentary moves on to social networking being evil by making random statements on the amount of pictures uploaded to Facebook and making general sweeping statements, everyone wanting their 15 minutes of fame and that we apparently enjoy the attention we receive from targeted ads and all of a sudden we’re in Africa where Josh disappeared to and now drinks tea all day long. His alleged visions the documentary was going on about the entire time didn’t come true or were obvious enough that they would have come true. He is entirely unlikable and violent man who, based on what’s shown in the film, hasn’t done anything worthwhile.
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So what’s the moral of the story? People are bad. Internet is good. People use internet badly. People are bad. There, I’ve saved you two hours of your life. You can thank me later.
