Author: Riley Kimball
This has been a big year for Mark Zuckerberg. In March, Facebook overtook Google as the most visited website on the Internet (CNN Money). Two months later, it was leaked that Zuckerberg once referred to Facebook users as “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their information (Gizmodo). And now, the once elusive founder and CEO of Facebook has been thrust violently into the public spotlight with the release of “The Social Network,” the new David Fincher movie about Facebook’s dubious beginnings. While based only on public knowledge surrounding Zuckerberg and Facebook’s genesis, the movie paints a very unflattering portrait of an asocial man who redefined socializing.Viewers have been divided over the film’s Zuckerberg. As a generation, we rely heavily on Facebook, and tends to favor Zuckerberg and his triumph over the corporate success of times past. Older generations, however, see Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of the billionaire as damning.
Even when I joined Facebook in early 2008, I still didn’t full trust the site. For that reason I don’t quite see eye to eye with many of my generation who may watch “The Social Network” and leave in reverent awe of Zuckerberg’s achievements. While I recognize his talent, foresight and drive, I can’t help but feel that the movie’s portrayal of Zuckerberg as a soulless, antisocial mess might be more accurate than Facebook, Inc. would like us to believe.
In the movie, Zuckerberg spends his time programming, planning and burning bridges. Not a single relationship he has or builds survives to the movie’s conclusion. His motivation is never about making friends so much as jumping to the top of the social ladder, from where he will not have to work for the attention of others. And both in the movie and in real life, he has succeeded.The question is, how can one distinguish between the movie Zuckerberg and the real one? The movie is based on Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires,” a novel of limited factual basis that Facebook regards as hostile. Another author, David Kirkpatrick, who wrote a work of non-fiction about Facebook, refutes nearly every negative depiction of Facebook that appears in the movie.
While the dialogue in the film is obviously fictional, the basis for it is not: about half of the movie takes place in depositions, and the transcripts of those conversations were used to write the script. It is during these depositions that Zuckerberg sometimes comes off coldest.
To prove the movie’s characterizations outside of the depositions, checking Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg with what is known about the man is very illuminating. Earlier this year (and more recently corroborated by Zuckerberg himself in the New Yorker), it was leaked that during Facebook’s earliest days, he referred to the roughly 4000 users who had profiles as “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their information.
In a similar conversation, he said he planned to “fuck in the ear” the Harvard twins who recruited him to program their Harvard-only social network. And this summer, Zuckerberg was seen at Capitol Hill, lobbying against pro-internet privacy laws.Given these statements, the image of Zuckerberg as an isolationist genius makes sense. While ours and younger generations might be swayed by his accomplishments, it would be a mistake to forget the man behind the phenomenon. This is not to say that I am somehow above such a perception of his genius; the irony doesn’t escape me – as I write this, Facebook is open in the background. But it’s important to remember that for every drunk photo we’re tagged in, every un-PC, disrespectful status or wallpost we’ve written, there is a 26-year-old holding the reins, steering Facebook for good or for evil, and if that man himself is not a bastion of good, then we really have been dumb fucks.
Riley Kimball is a junior DWA major. He can be reached at kimball@oxy.edu.
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