The Social Network tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, from his Harvard days to the earliest days of his company, The film recalls the birth of Facebook through Mark Zuckerberg’s theft of the Winklevoss twins’ idea to create Facebook, which was sued by the two brothers, and the out-of-office settlement between the two parties who designed to reduce Eduardo Saverin’s stake in Facebook, which was sued.
The whole film is not a lot of shining points in general, but it is a well-balanced film with stable rhythm, clear narration and wonderful dialogue without nonsense. The title ‘PUNK GENIUS TRAITOR BILLIONAIRE’ reveals how Zuckerberg changed from a computer GENIUS to a TRAITOR and BILLIONAIRE, It’s not just about Zuckerberg, it’s about people in the age of social media.
In fact, today our Internet companies are showing scenes of their own “The Social Network.” Originally in the daily life of the gentle people on the Internet, but the second change keyboard man, the ugly under their camouflage without reservation to vent out. In the age of social networking, weirdos have become more confident and smart people more anxious. In the past, those “non-mainstream” ideas were popular on the Internet. At first, I simply thought that this situation was just like the early stage of the movie, just a keyboard man who took off his fake mask and sat in front of the computer and happily matched with others. However, these misconceptions gradually move from the background to the front stage. In reality, there are more and more things that we have never heard of. It seems that wealth has become the only standard to measure whether a person is “successful”, traffic has become the only standard to determine whether a person is “popular”, and right and wrong are blatantly forgotten. Ideas that were once wrong are now sought after by “some people”. Social networks are affecting the world outside of social networks through its universality and real-time.
At the end of the film, the paralegal tells Zuckerberg: You’re not a jerk, you’re just trying too hard to be one. Let’s take it this way: Zuckerberg isn’t really a jerk, and the only verifiable legal error he’s involved in is Eduardo’s stock fraud (though Eduardo himself signed off on it). But his Internet industry left him no choice but to be a jerk.
I like how you highlight that the movie not only reflects how the power of creating Facebook changed Zuckerberg, but it also shows how the era of social media changes people. “Smart people are more anxious, weird people are more confident,” I love this statement. It shows that the age of social media grants so much power of self-reinvention that people don’t know what to exactly do with it: smart people in real life begin to overthink their identity and belonging, and people with weird, quirky traits find communities on social media that grant them a new sense of belonging. Social media helps and hinders personal growth by connecting friends and sustaining relationships, but also affecting perceptions of self and relationships in ways that do not always align with real life.
I was also struck by that line about smart people becoming more anxious and weirdos becoming more confident. It’s so interesting that the media has that much power to change us, and change us in different ways depending on our predispositions.
I hadn’t known about the settlement and the stolen idea, so I thought it was really interesting of how ultra-competitive technology was at this time and how it changed people. Because everyone wanted to be the first, the industry changed people for the worst.