The Social Network Movie

In the last scene of The Social Network, an attractive attorney who is working on Mark Zuckerberg’s case, has to turn down an offer to go grab something to eat with him and he is left sitting alone in an office conference room.  He’s the lonely young billionaire.

I find Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, and the main character in The Social Network, to be a fascinating fellow—at least as he’s played in the movie.  He doesn’t always come across as likeable in the movie, but he is always interesting.  Zuckerberg is one of those people who is absolutely brilliant and yet he is socially awkward.  It might even be fair to describe him as, socially, somewhat unaware.

Most of us have known someone who was frighteningly smart in terms of basic intelligence and yet the person didn’t know how to get along very well with other people.  Right?  It’s the person with the genius IQ who has trouble having an ordinary conversation involving small talk.  That’s Zuckerberg.

This is established in the very first scene of the movie.  In this scene, Zuckerberg and his girlfriend, Erica, are sitting in a bar on the campus of Harvard University and after he bothers, annoys, and, even, insults her, she tells us him that she is going to her dorm to study and that she is no longer his girlfriend.

That’s not a great way to end the evening.

The scene unfolds with some snappy dialogue that involves Erica telling Mark that dating him is “exhausting” because, she says, “going out with you is like dating a Stairmaster.”

Their exchange ends with Erica delivering this zinger: “Listen, you’re going to be successful and rich.  But you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a tech geek.  And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true.  It’ll be because you’re an… #x@*&!” 

This movie was interesting to me because of the Mark Zuckerberg character, in addition to that, the creation of Facebook is an interesting story.  In fact, the whole phenomenon of Facebook is fascinating to me.  Why do certain things catch on?  Facebook started at Harvard University and initially was opened selectively to various other universities.  At every university where it was made available thousands of students signed up within days.  Why is that the case?

Social networks already existed prior to Facebook, it was not a new concept.  Even the exclusivity of Facebook, which is highlighted in the movie as an important ingredient to its success, wasn’t a new concept.  So, why did it catch on so effectively and ultimately bypass other social networks, like MySpace, which had a great head start?

[If you know the answers to those questions, by the way, you might be “billionaire” material.]

I found the story of Facebook to be told in a compelling way in The Social Network.  And, believe me, it’s amazing that I’ve used the word “compelling” about a movie that does not contain a single explosion.  In fact, at no time during the movie was the word “kung fu” ever mentioned, and I still liked it.  Maybe I’m growing up, huh?  [Oh wait…what was I thinking?  That can’t be it.]

Ultimately, though, there was a sort of sad irony to the movie.  Mark creates the world’s most successful online social networking site allowing millions of people to be connected and, yet, he winds up being sued by the friends that he makes along the way, including his best friend.

At the end of the movie some follow-up type of information about several characters was provided in text on the screen.  The last bit of this follow-up information stated that Mark Zuckerberg is the world’s youngest billionaire.  And we’re reminded that a person can be very rich and still be lonely, in which case we have to wonder: Are you really rich?

Dan Marler

Oak Lawn, IL