Lauren McCarthy | the 2017 Gray Area Festival

Project: Follower 

Follower is a service that provides real-life follower for a day and in order to be followed you answer two questions: why should you be followed? and why should someone follow you? If your answer gets selected, you would get a picture at the end of the day took during the day by your follower, Lauren. One of the answers that really got to me was when one person said that they believe their life has more of a online importance than real life. Having people following them would help them shit their presence from the online world to the real world. I feel like this answer is relatable to a lot of us. In this digital world, we loses a lot of the real life connections, and are only left with intangible links like social media. Even though I think having a real life follower is a little creepy, it’s a good idea that can actually make people be more connected in real life. I thought it’s interesting how Lauren McCarthy plays with the idea of how we hate surveillance, but we also want to be seen.