Friday night’s party for the
NY premiere of the documentary We Live in Public enticed nerds away
from their computers with the promise of real-time social networking on
a revolutionary free-vodka-powered IRL interface. Candles glowed from
every crevice of Broadway East as aging Web 1.0’ers munched on spring rolls and reminisced about the ‘90s, when people like film subject Josh Harris pioneered the forms that ruin our privacy and distract us at work to this very day.
A combination photo/video booth encouraged partygoers to enter and answer questions like,“Would you rather die early and famous, or old and forgotten?” Further into the party, Gina Levy, friend of director Ondi Timoner, corroborated the importance of online personas. “In this day and age, you have to manage your image. Even if you’re nobody, someone’s gonna Google you.” Just then, the tall, blond Timoner, clad in a Lollapalooza ‘05 baby-doll tee, breezed over to chat up the film. “It came through me like a lightning flash,” she beamed. “We’ve got amazing supporters like Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore tweeting about it.” I excused myself when I spied Harris, whom Jayson Blair once dubbed “the Warhol of the web,” looking haunted as he clutched a seltzer and his BlackBerry. Had he seen the film? “No,” he replied. “It’s a little rough. I lived it. I pretty much know what’s there.”
Harris’ eyes bore straight through to my soul as he introduced much of the crew from his experiments in wired living. “The bunker party was the best one on the history of New York,” he recalled, referring to a month-long Y2K bash featured in the film, during which participants lived in a pod hotel. “Ever hear the phrase making the scene? Well, we made the scene. It was literally construction. After ‘96, we stopped doing invites...if you don’t know about it, we don’t want you.” Despite having fled to Ethiopia, Harris is now considering a move to L.A, where he’s building something he’d describe only as “a wired city.” Could he tell me more? “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You have a presence. If you find out what we’re doing, find me, you get an interview.”
