Aaron Sorkin Movie Depicts Facebook's Zuckerberg As Evilest Genius of Them All
Goodness. We knew Facebook was evil, but this evil? Take a look at this short trailer for the upcoming movie The Social Network , written by Aaron Sorkin, and then let's discuss:
So, obviously Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is much more frightening than we thought. In this treatment, he's depicted s as though he is the head of a rogue nation that has just gotten hold of a nuclear warhead, with plans to use it ... immediately. What?
We've heard the whole evil genius thing about Zuckerberg before, but this trailer so overplays the evil card that it could work in Facebook, and Zuckerberg's favor, as they come out of the PR black-eye from its latest controversy. It makes the poster for the movie (at right) look like goodness, sweetness and light.
While it's easy to have a beef with Facebook's frequent privacy uproars, do these happen because the company -- and Zuckerberg -- are inherently evil? Feel free to disagree, but the recent evidence is circumstantial, to say the least. The real touchstone in the movie seems to be Zuckerberg's college behavior, where there were allegations of him walking off with the general concept of a rival site, ConnectU, and perhaps even hacking it. The parties eventually settled -- for $65 million -- but if there's ever been a good idea that hasn't been the subject of a lawsuit, I'd like to find it. Suing is, after all, the American way.
The fact is if the company and its founder were truly evil -- being that evil, in our society, is the equivalent of greedy -- here's what would've happened: Facebook would've ramped up its revenue stream several years ago, and done an IPO -- then its leaders would've cashed out so they could concoct their next evil plot. Instead, even though their user growth has been meteoric, the company has chosen the slow, plodding route to making money. Facebook is on track to make somewhere north of $1 billion this year, but, relatively speaking, that's chump change. Google made $6.8 billion in the first quarter of this year alone.
The fact is that virtually all tech wunderkinds go through the evil genius phase during some part of their careers -- it's a rite of passage, like buying your first Maserati. Just ask Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. So, in portraying Zuckerberg as far more conniving than he is, Sorkin just did Facebook a big favor. As with the privacy uproars, most people won't care, and those that do will wonder why Sorkin has such a bee in his bonnet over a Web site where people do inane stuff like play Farmville and comment about their most recent latte.
(By the way, in case you were wondering, Aaron Sorkin has several pages on Facebook dedicated to his varying pursuits. He's really taking his life in his hands.)
Previous coverage of Facebook at BNET Media: