Mostly thanks to our wonderful friends Emma and Andrew who babysat for us this evening, we escaped to the cinema for the first time in three years tonight, in order to watch The Social Network - the movie about the origin of Facebook.
So what did I think?
It was interesting - thought provoking. It’s not perhaps as wonderful as the movie pundits might have you believe -I am mystified by the blanket approval of the critics featured by Rotten Tomatoes. Thoughts of The Emperor’s New Clothes come to mind.
Given the media coverage the movie received ahead of it’s release, I had been wondering what kind of hatchet job was going to be performed on Mark Zuckerberg. I walked out scratching my head - I’m not sure if my perspective is different than most, but his portrayal was hugely positive in my eyes.
A few key themes stood out for me;
Mark Zuckerberg was, and is a very gifted visionary, a great programmer, and possesses a quite brilliant mind. The fact that he might not always be willing to expend time on social graces is probably a common failing of people with such talents.
Students “with means” are universally unlikeable, arrogant, and conceited. Cameron and TylerWinklevoss must be pretty pissed at their horrendous (but likely accurate) portrayal in the movie.
The mass media who report on Facebook and Zuckerberg’s every move are fanatically jealous of their success, and frustrated at the scarcity of mud to fling at him.
It’s telling that there have been no lawsuits regarding the subject matter of the movie splashed across the press - which provides it’s own validation of the veracity of the account.
I noticed LiveJournal appeared several times during the movie. For those that do not know, LiveJournal was the WordPress of it’s day - the first large scale, successful hosted blogging solution on the internet. It’s appearance caused a thought to begin ticking away at the back of my mind. I would love to see the LiveJournal traffic over the last few months - and the arrival of the current generation of college kids who will no doubt have noticed it, and looked it up.
I still remember one afternoon in about 2002 when LiveJournal went down for a few hours. Somebody posted to a forum I frequented at the time “it was as if a million 17 year old girls screamed out, and were suddenly silenced”…