Eye spy

By Sean Rosner

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Clare Higgins is interested in people. Their gestures, their expressions, their stories and the way they interact with others. So when the Topeka freshman is on the bus, in line for a basketball game or eating in the Underground, she pays attention.

“I just like watching what people do when they think no one is watching. It’s amusing,” Higgins says.

Higgins is a people-watcher. And she’s not alone. Whether it’s on the street, on Facebook, in celebrity gossip magazines or on reality television shows, young adults are fascinated with the lives of others. But what is it that makes other people so interesting, and why do we spend so much of our time watching them?

William Staples, chair of the KU department of sociology and author of Everyday Surveillance, says our generation has an obsession with viewing others, and the emergence of technology such as the Internet has only driven this further. Staples points to reality television and celebrity gossip blogs and magazines as examples of this obsession. People-watching, Staples says, is just a more mundane version of reality television. He says catching people unaware is appealing because it is more real.

“There is a search for authenticity in modern culture. The more spontaneous, the more authentic it is,” Staples says.

Jon Hartner, Chicago senior, has other interests in mind when he watches people. An urban planning major, Hartner likes to examine how various environments affect the way people behave. He studies and compares how people act on campus, downtown and in restaurants and bars. He hopes his knowledge of the way people act in different situations will help him design better cities in the future.

“People are what make up cities, not just buildings,” Hartner says.

For many, though, people-watching is appealing simply because people do funny things when they think no one is looking.

Courtney Williams, Marathon, Iowa, junior, says she always gets a good laugh when she sees people singing and dancing while listening to headphones.

“I was waiting in my car outside of the Burge Union one time, and Jake Sharp comes out doing what he probably thought was dancing. It was so hilarious,” Williams says.

Lauren Barry, San Diego junior, says she does most of her people-watching on campus during breaks between classes.

“I think so far this year, the funniest thing I’ve seen was early in the semester a guy was attempting to unlock his bike from the racks in front of Budig Hall, only to discover that someone had locked their bike onto his lock. He just screamed, ‘asshole!’ It was great,” Barry says.

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