Before The Social Network movie came out, I had never heard of Mark Zuckerberg. I certainly had never heard of the many other people who went to battle with him over the billion dollar empire that Facebook has become. And even now, just a couple of hours after watching The Social Network, I couldn’t tell you who any of these other people are. Other than the fact that two of them were twins with weird last names who rowed in the Olympics.
But I did like the movie. There is something just flat out amazing about the idea that some über geek took an idea that was already around-Myspace and Friendster are the examples mentioned in the film-and became über rich by constantly tweaking facebook to be more and more ‘cool.’ Of course, the Post Office should have become FedEx and Ace Hardware should have become Home Depot, so there is nothing really new about tweaking an idea and running with it.
The Social Network shows us that Mark Zuckerberg is a total loser, a mega nerd, and has social skills that make the geeks on Big Bang Theory look like Prom Kings. One of the more ironic themes of the film is that Mark has one friend, and only one friend-who he soon enough screws out of his share of facebook.
The screenplay for The Social Network was written by Aaron Sorkin and it is a complex bit of business. The story hops from place to place and time to time. One minute Mark is a high IQ loser and the next he is a billionaire loser. The film makes it clear that he was inspired to create facebook after talking to three other students who have an idea for a website, but Mark clearly doesn’t think he has done anything wrong. This is like someone giving you ten dollars to play a slot machine and when you win, you say; I won, but it wasn’t while I was using your ten dollars.
No one is really a good guy here. The only person who seems to have any sense and morality is Mark’s buddy who signed away his rights to facebook because he didn’t read the fine print. It is never really clear why Mark screws him over, though it is implied that it has something to do with Mark’s jealousy of just about everyone he ever met.
The film follows the launching of facebook and the lawsuits that followed. Clearly being a genius helps when you want to whip up a website and get thousands, then millions of user in a very short time. Being a genius at programing and marketing doesn’t make Mark rich, he needs the help of another Internet whiz kid for that. The founder of Napster, played to sleazy perfection by Justin Timberlake, takes facebook to the next level and suddenly money is one less thing for Mark to have to worry about. Near the end of the film a kindly woman tells Mark that he isn’t really an asshole, but you can’t prove that from watching The Social Network.
At the end of The Social Network, Mark is alone, fiddling with facebook. He is an anti-social with no friends who has become a billionaire by building a site where people connect with their friends. All we need is a shot from the future where he sits in a clean room with long hair and fingernails like Howard Hughes.
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