February 24, 2001

7:47 AM

We Live In... Hell?Tanya Corrin on Josh Harris as profoundly fucked company: "By day 60, I had to get out. By day 78, still unable to find an apartment, I chose couch surfing instead of remaining in a very public nightmare." On the one hand, deeply satisfying; on the other, deeply sad.
posted by holgate (13 comments total)

And if you're prepared to cope with something more voyeuristic than the actual site, and the usual FC rubbish, the exchange that follows between "Josh" and "Tanya" (real or not) is quite, um, something. Meta-trolling.
posted by holgate at 8:10 AM on February 24, 2001

Why are the Fucked Co bulletin boards so creepy?
posted by amanda at 8:14 AM on February 24, 2001

amanda: my feelings exactly. what's sad isn't that the experiment failed. what's sad are the people who can't respect others for trying something.
posted by o2b at 8:45 AM on February 24, 2001

Reading through the message boards sent me screaming back to here, where the possibility of a decent discourse actually exists.

And yes, the "josh" and "tanya" are trolls. What do these people tell themselves about their own lives? Yeuggh.
posted by argybarg at 9:04 AM on February 24, 2001

I don't quite understand. Is the troll attempting to sully Harriss' name online, or bring him even more dubious fame?
posted by sid at 10:09 AM on February 24, 2001

what's sad are the people who can't respect others for trying something.

Oh, I dunno. I think some of the contributors on the FC board got it completely right about the amount of navel-gazing the "experiment" entailed. We Live In Public always came across as an inverted Jennicam, where the publicity preceded the phenomenon. Not that this makes Jennicam any less of an ethical car-crash, but at least that one was a gruesome accident rather than a set-up.
posted by holgate at 10:24 AM on February 24, 2001

This story is actually a wholesale cut & paste from a NY Observer story at http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=3874 . So you can rest assured that the Tanya & Josh posting to the site are trolls, & the original posting was probably just something posted as troll bait in the first place.
posted by zempf at 10:33 AM on February 24, 2001

Wow. Those boards are brutal. (inhales a big lungful of clean MeFi air)

If they are trolls, they're fairly skilled trolls. It's interesting reading either way. While I think the concept of the site was artificial and forced and generally icky, I don't think the principals (if they are actually that) deserve the level of nastiness that is being slung around over at FC. Then again, that's not exactly a place that I would go to look for sympathy and understanding.

posted by Optamystic at 10:39 AM on February 24, 2001

The FC boards aren't just brutal, they're . . . dank. I feel nice and clean when I start reading, and after ten posts I feel like the letters editor at "Juggs Over Forty" magazine.
posted by lileks at 11:11 AM on February 24, 2001

what's sad are the people who can't respect others for trying something

Actually, I don't care about the respect issue. And lileks hit it just right for me -- it's a very dark atmosphere over there. The few times I've read the FCo boards have been pretty painful experiences. There's just a lot of vitriol over there and whether it's aimed correctly or not is neither here nor there for me.
posted by amanda at 2:17 PM on February 24, 2001

I like FC in small doses, but it sure makes me appreciate the mood over here that much more.

As for Josh Harris, in the articles I've read he seems to like to portray himself as a new Warhol. I see more parallels to Jeff Koons . (more) Usually (but not always) when I hear people talk about creating art via "recontextualization" it just makes me think of the Emperor's Clothes.


posted by gimli at 3:36 PM on February 24, 2001

I have to say, I quit reading a bit after the "The 'It' Couple of Silicon Alley" thing, that is so pathetic and deluded. Why is everyone on the web so so so full of themselves?
posted by beefula at 5:35 PM on February 24, 2001