Anti-Social
I finally got around to seeing that film everyone’s talking about. And, after reading Nathan Heller and Ross Douthat and Steve Sailer and Jose Antonio Vargas and Dana Stevens and Irin Carmon and Aaron Sorkin himself you’d think I’d have nothing more to add to the conversation. Hah! What kind of blogger do you think I am?
So: three points:
1. On the “does this say something important about the meritocracy” question: I think Ross has interesting things to say about the meritocracy, but I didn’t see it in the movie. That is to say: I get what he’s saying about the Winklevi actually buying into the same value system as Zuckerberg. The whole scene with Summers is intended to drive home the message that Harvard isn’t impressed with pedigree and isn’t trying to turn out gentlemen; everyone is about accomplishment, and accomplishment is measured relative to competitors. The Winklevi lose a race to the Dutch by inches; them’s the breaks. In their own minds, they lost a race – unfairly – to Zuckerberg, and now he’ll be a famous billionaire innovator and they’ll be . . . a couple of good-looking rich Harvard guys who nobody’s ever heard of. Time to sue.
But Nathan Heller’s point is that this picture gets Zuckerberg wrong. That he wasn’t this resentful creature out to get revenge on everybody who snubbed him. That he wasn’t, in fact, anxious about his social status at all. A movie about the Winklevoss twins that ended with them getting $65 million out of Zuckerberg, and leaving them . . . still just two rich good looking Harvard guys who nobody ever heard of – now that would be a movie making Ross’s point about meritocracy. But this isn’t their movie; it’s Zuckerberg’s movie. Why is his story something that speaks to “our time” – assuming it does?
2. On the sexism question: it seems to me Sorkin cuts his defenders off at the knees with his own self-defense. Many of Sorkin’s defenders have responded to claims that the movie doesn’t get Zuckerberg or his milieu right by saying, basically: it’s a movie. It’s following narrative conventions. It’s making about point about a certain kind of personality and its place in our society; it’s about the real Zuckerberg, but about a Zuckerberg invented to make an effective and important movie.
But Sorkin’s own defense is: no, this is about the real Zuckerberg. “I used Marks’ blog verbatim.” “Facebook was born during a night of incredibly [sic] mysogyny.” “These aren’t the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80’s. They’re very angry that the cheerleader still wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men (boys) who are running the universe right now.”
Really? I didn’t go to Harvard with Zuckerberg, but I know a lot of nerds, including some very competitive and very rich ones. None of them fit this picture.
There’s a certain poetic justice in Mark Zuckerberg of all people being hoist by the petard of a blog entry he posted when he was 19, but it’s still obviously absurd to conclude that this blog post reveals the “real” Zuckerberg and his (so far as we can tell) healthy relationship with his long-time girlfriend is some kind of fluke. So the question remains: why did Sorkin write a movie arguing, basically, that Facebook was born of the mysogyny of social losers. His complication of their loserdom – basically, that they know that they will be financially successful, but they see no evidence that this will translated into sexual success, and this enrages them – doesn’t really change the basic picture.
3. What is Facebook, anyway? Zuckerberg says several times in the movie that “we don’t even know what it is yet” – but that was in 2003. We know what it is now. It’s a vehicle for promoting a new kind of addictive behavior, namely playing Farmville. But what do the moviemakers think it was, back in 2003? Why do they think it won the race?
A movie, of course, isn’t a treatise; Sorkin and Fincher aren’t doing an analysis of Facebook for Harvard Business School. But, really, this movie has two subjects: Zuckerberg and his creation. They created a Zuckerberg that served their narrative purposes, to make a point about the social environment among America’s elite and the psychology of the nerd-kings who now run the universe. But what about the creation?
Zuckerberg mocks the Winklevi in the movie for their idea for a Harvard dating site. But the only things we know about Facebook from the movie and why it succeeds are: (1) that it’s exclusive (meaning you get to pick your friends); (2) you can post your relationship status (meaning, you could use the site to look for dates); (3) it’s “cool” – though what makes it “cool” is never specified.
Forgive me for thinking that none of these are actual explanations – that is to say, none of them are the result of thinking about the actual question, or reading people who thought about the actual question. They are a priori answers designed to connect to themes the filmmakers had already decided on. And I think that’s a shame. I wanted to learn something about the creation of Facebook, and I don’t feel like i did.
To me, the film was a disappointment. Honestly, I would have rather seen a movie about the Winklevoss twins. I found their story, and their dilemma, a lot more interesting than Zuckerberg’s. After all, we already know it’s lonely at the top, that to succeed you sometimes lose your friends; and we came into the movie prejudiced to believe that the nerds envy the jocks and are thinking about sex all the time. But a story about two gorgeous, rich jocks who are so envious of the nerd that they can’t let go of the notion that he stole their idea? That’s a story we haven’t heard before. That would be interesting.
“So the question remains: why did Sorkin write a movie arguing, basically, that Facebook was born of the mysogyny of social losers.”
… because that’s his point? As Fincher has also said, it’s the many ironies of social failures creating the world’s largest social website.
“… we already know it’s lonely at the top, that to succeed you sometimes lose your friends …”
Almost every film / novel ever created deals with a perennial theme of some kind, with some sort of ‘obvious’ or basic truth about the human condition, expressed in a novel/creative/beautiful way. Right?
— paul h. · Oct 14, 04:23 PM · #
I challenged Heller about his column on Twitter; it seemed really clear to me that he was sensitive to the idea that, perhaps, his Harvard degree isn’t entirely a symbol of unmitigated meritocracy. He conceded a bit in reply, and said that his point wasn’t that there weren’t illegitimate status networks that lead to success at Harvard, but only that they aren’t the old WASPY networks of yore.
I still think he’s nuts. There are still Astors and Rockerfellers out there, and they still have more money and power than God.
— Come Back Zinc! · Oct 14, 05:57 PM · #
Good suggestion, Noah. The Winklevii parts were the most fun sections of the movie, in part, of course, because they are identical twins. Having spent a couple of weeks this summer with identical twin nephews, I can say that identical twinness is a very interesting subject, and now that the technology has advanced to the point where one actor can play two roles seamlessly, why not explore it.
One other point that has been overlooked is that why do we assume that Aaron Sorkin (Syracuse, Class of ’83) is an expert on Harvard? The movie struck me as, in sizable part, a projection of Sorkin’s resentments from three decades ago against the people who got into Harvard when he didn’t.
Finally, it’s important to remember that just because the movie is extremely well made doesn’t mean it is terribly insightful or accurate about Kids These Days or whatever. It’s just extremely well made.
— Steve Sailer · Oct 14, 08:24 PM · #
Also, reading interviews with Sorkin, he makes clear that he was motivated by attitudes typical among middle aged parents these days like, why don’t kids go outside anymore, why don’t they socialize in person the way we did in the Good Old Days? I share these concerns of Sorkin’s, but that seems like a good motivation for a movie about Facebook users, not about Facebook’s inventor. Making a movie depicting the inventor of Facebook as a nasty person is a fairly irrelevant ad hominem argument against Facebook.
— Steve Sailer · Oct 14, 08:52 PM · #
If you haven’t read Lessig’s entry on this film, you really should.
— Patrick · Oct 15, 01:35 AM · #
I can’t take Lessig’s piece seriously, as it is predicated on the idea that Facebook is a success, and Facebook just isn’t a success yet. Never shown a profit, never come close.
— Come Back Zinc! · Oct 15, 11:40 AM · #
How exactly do the twins “snub” Mark? The movie may make his motivations too neat, but I thought it was made clear than Zuckerberg was was able to perceive the potential applications of a site like Facebook in a much broader way than either the twins or Eduardo could. Watching him try to apologize to Rooney Mara is a good scene, but the core of his motivation is his taking offense at the twins’ proposed site being available only to those with the right email address.
— Simon Crowe · Oct 15, 01:53 PM · #
“I can’t take Lessig’s piece seriously”
I couldn’t get past the headline of Lessig’s piece. I realize that’s unfair to Lessig, since he didn’t write the headline, but I can’t overcome my suspicion that his essay is as irretrievably juvenile as the phrase “actually kind of evil.”
“One other point that has been overlooked is that why do we assume that Aaron Sorkin (Syracuse, Class of ’83) is an expert on Harvard?”
I don’t think having an “expert on Harvard” or a Harvard alumnus write the movie would necessarily have made it more insightful. Even works of social realism or parody, like The Bonfire of the Vanities, benefit when their authors have some distance from their subjects.
As for whether the movie is inaccurate because it represents Sorkin’s middle-aged concerns and neuroses, rather than reality—as someone who’s more or less in the same generation as Zuckerberg, I didn’t feel like the movie was analyzing things from an out-of-touch perspective. I think that’s because Sorkin, as he’s said in interviews, is really writing about larger themes that aren’t particularly dependent on a deep understanding of Facebook and the internet.
This is just a story about a guy who, despite his many remarkable talents, feels (and therefore is) isolated from the people around him. That’s why I’m not particularly convinced by arguments that final clubs aren’t actually central to social life and social climbing at Harvard. That doesn’t seem relevant; what does seem relevant is that someone with no natural aptitude for making friends would seize on something like final clubs and say, “Okay, if I can just get into one of these clubs then my problems with people will be solved.” Clearly there’s a lot of dispute over whether the real Zuckerberg actually thought like this, but from everything I’ve read it seems fair to portray him as socially awkward and distant from the people around him. So the irony that defines the movie’s portrayal of Facebook’s founding seems true to life.
The only insight one needs to connect that specific story to modern life is the insight that the internet can “connect” you to people while simultaneously keeping you isolated from them. That’s not an original idea; it would make an absolutely terrible, cliched subject for, say, a book or an essay. But that’s why drama is different from non-fiction—it doesn’t rise and fall on the originality and utility of the ideas it expresses, it rises and falls based on whether it uses its characters and situations to provoke emotions and identification in the audience.
On that level the movie succeeded, at least for me. The effectiveness of the final scene is that it DOES take Zuckerberg’s story and connect it to the larger question of how Facebook has changed social interaction—we see the company’s founder using his invention in the same isolated and forlorn way many of its users do. Clearly you can come back with the argument that this is an inaccurate, fuddy-duddyish view of Facebook and the internet, but it’s certainly an aspect of life in the internet age that’s worth noting and dramatizing.
— Charlie · Oct 15, 03:40 PM · #
“it’s important to remember that just because the movie is extremely well made doesn’t mean it is terribly insightful or accurate about Kids These Days or whatever. It’s just extremely well made.”
That’s a sentiment that needs to be tattooed inside the eyelids of anyone, amateur or pro, who tries to review a film. Many, many moons ago, a high level of skill in filmmaking would usually signify a certain amount of intellectual or emotional depth. Advances in both technology of standards of craftsmanship have broken that connection.
Most films today are extremely well made, even when their underlying story is a bunch of nonsense.
Mike
— MBunge · Oct 15, 03:47 PM · #
You really ought to give the Lessig piece a chance. It’s got some good stuff in there.
— Ethan C. · Oct 16, 03:16 PM · #
I can’t take Lessig’s piece seriously, as it is predicated on the idea that Facebook is a success, and Facebook just isn’t a success yet. Never shown a profit, never come close.
I think Mark Zuckerberg would have about 6.9 billion counterarguments to this.
— Ethan C. · Oct 16, 03:25 PM · #
The ability to generate venture capital and to enrich oneself by doing it is a vastly different thing than having a profitable business, as th Dot Com bubble showed.
Also: like almost everyone who writes about it, Lessig doesn’t understand what hacking is. Mark Zuckerberg is not a hacker, or at least, his efforts building an elegant proprietary software are not hacking.
— Come Back Zinc! · Oct 16, 07:33 PM · #
The ability to generate venture capital and to enrich oneself by doing it is a vastly different thing than having a profitable business, as th Dot Com bubble showed.
Yes, well, I think I’d take $6.9 billion either way. :)
Also: like almost everyone who writes about it, Lessig doesn’t understand what hacking is.
Ah, so the guy who came up with Creative Commons doesn’t understand hacking. Thanks for the clarification. Could you please enlighten us about its true nature, so we don’t commit any further errors?
— Ethan C. · Oct 18, 05:03 PM · #
Inventing the Creative Commons, of course, has nothing to do with computer programming. As you know, and you’re simply being obtuse, or your understanding of these issues is entirely trivial. But go ahead: research whether he was actually doing any coding. Or investigate whether his expertise is in computers. Go.
As for hacking, the term “hacking” has a meaning. A hack is a quick, ugly, and short-term solution to a computing program. Putting together a suite of proprietary softwares that are designed to be elegant and utilized by end-users is not hacking. But, again, you know, Google is your friend.
Next time, before you adopt the pedantic tone, maybe you should know what you’re talking about.
— Freddie · Oct 19, 05:42 PM · #
whoops my brother’s info was remembered, that was me.
— Come Back Zinc! · Oct 19, 05:44 PM · #