"The Social Network"

***WARNING: SPOILER ALERTS! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!***


On the last few posts I've mentioned and referred to the recently new film that's come out in theaters called "The Social Network". For those of you who have no remote interest in short-lived fad culture "The Social Network" is the new, "rave" movie of the month to see according to corporately-funded product placement and the precise targeting tactics of a well-paid marketing team. "The Social Network" tells the story of the early Harvard days of Mark Zuckerberg, Co-founder and CEO of Facebook, and how the creation and rise of Facebook came to be the behemoth of social networks it is today. Jesse Eisenberg ("Zombieland") depicted the character of Zuckerberg as a gifted, yet deeply aloof Harvard undergrad who is obsessed with trying to "distinguish himself" in an institution of the best and brightest America has to offer. The movie starts off with Mark eventually getting dumped by his girlfriend after he vents his frustrations through backhanded compliments and borderline narcissistic juxtapositions that would make Donald Trump blush. So now Mark's drunk, depressed, and worst of all dumped. Is he so different that he'd actually go home, sleep on it, and move on with the rest of his life? Not at all.

In shallow spite he creates a website called "Facemash", which is compiled of pictures of Harvard women posted on the directory (dubbed "facebooks") of each Harvard house and displyed as a attractiveness contest similar to www.hotornot.com (Note: This is after he publicly blogs about the comparison of women to farm animals. LOL!). As he goes through each houses' website Mark narrates the methods of his data mining in detail using the technical jargon that 99% of a usual audience wouldn't even bother to learn let alone understand. This happens to be one of my favorite part of the movie, not because of the character's expression of inner sexual frustration, but because I knew enough of what he was saying to have a genuinely nonchalant expression and respond to rest of that scene with thoughts like "Easy enough", "There's a faster way to do that", "I did that when I was 10" (/brag). Anyway his site garners enough web traffic to overloads Harvard's server database in what was presumably thought to be a denial-of-service attack. Soon after, Zuckerberg creates "Thefacebook" the original predecessor of "Facebook". From this project Zuckerberg has an epiphany of how the structure of today's society is followed with students joining exclusive clubs, guys having to go through courting and "the game" to fulfill their sexual desires, and how this incorporates with the survival of the individual human being (...or maybe it's just me)

I'm going to stop the detail here because the rest of the movie follows the lawsuits of his (ex-)business partners, post-pubescent drama following the entrance of Sean Parker (co-founder of Napster, portrayed by Justin Timberlake) and the obvious legal and technical stuff that you can all read on Wikipedia (seriously, it's all there, you don't need to pay $12 to know the story).

And now we have Facebook, that seemingly addicting website that you can't just log off of, that you can't leave for one day without getting the itch to check on what your friends are doing this very minute, that you need to change your password and have someone hold the account until you finish studying for that big midterm next Monday. What's interesting about this movie is all the hoo-hah about making the real Mark Zuckerberg look like the greedy, self-centered, narcissistic asshole that Eisenberg's character portrays pretty decently with regards to his previous movie credits. The movie's poster shows the caption "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies" superimposed on Eisenberg's stoic countenance. Technically, the script is based on author Ben Mezrich's "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal", which was consultant primarily by Eduardo Saverin, who was portrayed in "The Social Network" by actor Andrew Garfield and currently holds 5% share of Facebook's stock. So what does this all mean? Should we think of Mark Zuckerberg as the quintessential overnight billionaire who sacrifices his humanity for personal wealth? Is it fair to justify this impression based upon a movie? How about a book that tells the same story with the input from a Facebook business partner? What about the fact that Zuckerberg donated $100 billion to Newark public schools prior to the national debut of "The Social Network", despite his honest attempts to keep the two events separate from each other? Did he try to save face or was he being a philanthropist?

These are questions I had raised for myself before, during, and after the movie. All I can say is: I don't know. All I know is Mark Zuckerberg created a "monster", a monster we all love to hate, hate to love, and, for most people, quick to use on a daily basis. Honestly, it's inspiring me to create something, something I can share with the world one day that'll benefit me and the rest of mankind. Someday I'll look back at this and laugh and wonder "If I was so cool, why didn't I do that when I was 10?".