Hello, my name is Justin Hall and I've been sharing my personal life in explicit detail online for over twenty years. Starting in 1994, my personal web site Justin's Links from the Underground has documented family secrets, romantic relationships, and my experiments with sex and drugs.
overshare: the links.net story is a documentary about fumbling to foster intimacy between strangers online. Through interviews, analysis and graphic animations, I share my motivations, my joys and my sorrows from pioneering personal sharing for the 21st century. In 2004 the New York Times referred to me as "perhaps the founding father of personal weblogging." I hope this documentary reveals that I was a privileged white male with access to technology who worked to invite as many people as possible to join him in co-creating an internet where we have a chance to honestly share of our humanity.
watch or download overshare
overshare: the links.net story the entire 40 minute film is available for free viewing and downloading online:
- 40 minutes film free over BitTorrent - thanks Archive.org
- 40 minutes film free on the Internet Archive
- 40 minutes film free on YouTube
- 40 minutes film free on Facebook
- 40 minutes film free on Vimeo
- 40 minutes film for sale on overshare.vhx.tv - your chance to spend money on an otherwise free film
overshare is also available in eight chapters between 2 and 10 minutes long:
- 8 chapters of overshare on YouTube: http://bit.ly/overshareYT
- 8 chapters of overshare on Facebook
- 8 chapters of overshare on dailymotion
overshare: the links.net story is for sale using a service called VHX. VHX supports streaming, rentals and DRM-free downloads so you can watch this film on your device, on your own time. VHX has been a fun way for me to offer a friendly storefront for my creative video work. I am biased though, I interviewed VHX CEO Jamie Wilkinson in October 2013; I find him and the other people associated with the company quite pleasant to associate with.
overshare screening
Some folks are showing overshare: the links.net story live! If possible, I try to join, sit mostly quietly through the screenings and then learn more about the audience afterwards. Here's overshare: the links.net story listing on FilmFreeway for programming in festivals.
overshare Coverage
Other folks have mentioned overshare after it was released; here's a few links:
- Justin Hall at Medium.com: overshare: the release strategy
- blog.vhx.tv: Blogging pioneer Justin Hall releases Overshare online, 14 September 2014
- Kase Wickman at MTV News: "One Of The First Webloggers Shares 6 Things He's Learned On The Internet", 25 August 2015
- NRC Handelsblad: "Filmen over schrijven over jezelf", 21 August 2015
- Scott Beale at LaughingSquid.com: "Overshare: The Links.net Story is a fascinating documentary", 18 August 2015
- Jim Leonard: "One of the most raw, heartfelt, and brutally honest looks looks at the birth of social blogging and the web", 17 August 2015
- Howard Rheingold: "historically important, often hilarious, autobiovideo", 14 August 2015
- Rob Capps: "Got sucked in and watched all of the Justin Hall doc. Terrific. Reminded me of lots of things I had forgotten.", 13 August 2015
- Chacha Sikes: "I highly, most highly, recommend this brand new documentary on early blogging and HTML. Thank you Justin Hall for this honest story!", 13 August 2015
- allgoodfound says "Visiting the documentary page is pure nostalgia...", 12 August 2015
- boingboing: "I love Justin, and I love how he wrote the web. This movie is amazing." - Cory Doctorow, 11 August 2015
- kottke.org: "Justin's Links from the Underground was one of the first sites I found and read regularly, back in the mid 90s."
- search for Twitter for justin hall overshare
support overshare
The movie is available for free, so paying for it is generous gesture. There's a "overshare: TMI edition" on VHX that has even more documentation of personal documentation: behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes and so forth. On VHX you can even pay above than the minimum cost of the film if you'd like to encourage this kind of conduct.
HTML Titles and Credits
I first started publishing here on "Justin's Links from the Underground" in January 1994, commencing a wild ride. In 2004 I celebrated 10 years with a writeup. In 2014 I started producing a short video to celebrate 20 years, and this is the result published in 2015 instead.
Using antique HTML, I created the titles and credits for the film that you can explore here.
Creative Commons Attribution
overshare: the links.net story is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Probably the easiest place to download overshare from is the Internet Archive, though if you purchase either edition on VHX, you can download to your heart's content. If you own the overshare: TMI edition that means you can download even less polished media like old versions and outtakes.
Either way, the film is loose, out of my control now. People can download, modify, republish their own remixes. Let's see what happens! If anything - over hundreds of years stories that aren't copied or remixed tend to die.
Do you have questions or suggestions? Feel free to contact me!