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| Meta Title | Ten Years Later, Mark Zuckerberg Is Still Trying to Overcome âThe Social Networkâ - The Ringer |
| Meta Description | How David Fincherâs masterpiece became a tech CEOâs origin storyâeven if itâs not totally true. |
| Meta Canonical | null |
| Boilerpipe Text | Adam Villacin
On the cusp of the 25th anniversary ofÂ
Se7enÂ
and the 10th anniversary ofÂ
The Social Network
,Â
The RingerÂ
hereby dubs Sept. 21-25
David Fincher Week
. Join us all throughout the week as we celebrate and examine the man, the myth, and his impeccable body of work.
In 2017, Mark Zuckerberg returned to Harvard for a victory lap that most people can only dream of. Twelve years after the Facebook CEO dropped out of school to run what would become the largest online social network in the world, the elite Ivy League would give him an honorary degree. Facebook celebrated the event as an opportunity to showcase the companyâs history and display a more personal side of its CEO, organizing a few public broadcasts ahead of the speech. One of those included a visit to Kirkland House H33, the room where it all started.
âThis is the first time that weâve been back in this dorm since I left,â Zuckerberg said in a Facebook Live video that he was filming from his smartphone. With his college sweetheart
Priscilla Chan
in tow, he directed viewers toward his old desk, and the rooms where his Facebook cofounders (and then-roommates) Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes worked and slept. After some reminiscing about tiny bed sizes and dining hall cuisine, he addressed an incident that has, over the span of the past decade, become millennial folklore.
âOne weekend I wanted to build this prank website, FaceMash,â he said with his signature indecipherable smile. âI basically sat here for, like, three days straight, and just coded this thing. And it was a prank. It was kind of funny but also a little bit in poor taste.â He summarized how it spread quickly, froze his laptop, and caused Harvard officials to turn off the entire dormâs internet connection. âThat was probably one of my more memorable moments from Kirkland House, just sitting here, and, like, Iâm trying to fix this, Dustinâs trying to do his computer-science problem set, Chris is trying to write some paper for social studies or whatever heâs studying, and all the sudden the internet goes dark.â
Live from my old dorm room at Harvard.
Posted by
Mark Zuckerberg
on Tuesday, May 23, 2017
As Zuckerberg tells it, the story of FaceMash was nothing more than an innocent college gag that ended in a night of forced unproductivity. But chances are, most people watching that day remember it differently, as the riveting sequence of events at the start of a major Hollywood blockbuster called
The Social Network
. After conquering the business world, Zuckerberg had finally earned the approval of the elite institution heâd once antagonized. But sitting at his old dorm room desk years later, it seemed his one remaining challenge was to reclaim his past.Â
In the decade since
The Social Networkâ
s release, Facebook has become so omnipresent and unregulated that no misstepâwhether related to
privacy
,
anti-trust
laws
,
geopolitics
, or
genocide
âhas managed to etch away at its dominance. Because Zuckerberg holds control of somewhere around
60 percent
of Facebookâs voting shares, he alone can determine what people see when they log on to Facebook and Instagram, what privacy settings they have access to, and the difference between violent and incendiary speech. As Chris Hughes, that same cofounder he roomed with back at Harvard,
wrote in a 2019
New York
Times
op-ed
, âMarkâs influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government.â
In tandem with that growing influence, Zuckerbergâs public persona is now so heavily managed that youâd have a better time deciphering the feelings of
the AI assistant he once built
to run his house than determining what heâs
really
thinking. Maybe thatâs why Aaron Sorkinâs version of the ambitious boy hacker still clings to the publicâs imagination. The more Zuckerberg has been shrouded in corporate armor, the more people have turned to his silver-screen depiction for clues.Â
How exactly did a Hollywood film beat the
most powerful unelected man
in America at telling his own origin story? It all begins with an enterprising science-fiction writer with a penchant for, uh, literary embellishment.Â
The Book
Before Ben Mezrich
signed
what was reportedly a million-dollar-plus book deal to write
The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal
, his reporting credentials had been dragged through the mud. His previous book,Â
Bringing Down the House
, about a troupe of MIT students who used advanced blackjack techniques to win millions of dollars in Vegas, was the first âtrueâ story heâd ever written, and it showed. Not long after it came out in 2002, its main charactersÂ
debunked
 its most lurid details: They did not collaborate with strippers to cash their chips, the underground Chinatown casino where they supposedly practiced didnât exist, and a private detective with ânarrow ice-blue eyesâ never beat them up in a casino bathroom. Still, those flourishes helped Mezrich more than they hurt him. The book sold over 1 million copies, and eventually became a Kevin Spaceyâproduced heist film called
21.Â
With
Accidental Billionaires
, it was more of the same. The bookâs first cover advertised a tale of college debauchery with a slinky red bra and broken martini glass. Its narrative goes like this: Zuckerberg is a dorky nobody who, like everyone else at Harvard, is determined to join one of the schoolâs elite social clubs. (Mezrich, a Harvard graduate himself, emphasizes in vivid, knowing detail just how important this kind of membership is to meeting women and getting laid.) Scorned by a mystery woman one evening, Zuckerberg gets drunk in his dorm room and revenge-codes a campus-specific
Hot or Not
site.Â
That part, at least, was a real-life incident that was
documented
in the LiveJournal updates Zuckerberg used to narrate his creation of the burgeoning social media tool: âJessica Aâ is a bitch,â he wrote. âI need to think of something to take my mind off her. I need to think of something to occupy my mind. Easy enough, now I just need an idea.â Another entry: âIâm a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if itâs not even 10 p.m. and itâs a Tuesday night? What? The Kirkland facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.â Later: âYea, itâs on. Iâm not exactly sure how the farm animals are going to fit into this whole thing (you canât really ever be sure with farm animals . . .), but I like the idea of comparing two people together.â
FaceMash goes viral and inspires Zuckerberg to make something bigger. Meanwhile, two pedigreed rowers named Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss ask him to help with their own campus social network. He leads them on, while partnering with his best friend, Eduardo Saverin, to create a fast-growing competing product. Eventually, Sean Parker, the cofounder of Napster, swoops in whispering sweet nothings of VC funding in Zuckerbergâs ear. The two hatch a scheme to push Saverin out of the company. (Parkerâs affinity for women and parties, meanwhile, seals his fate.) Zuckerberg emerges alone atop the fastest growing social network in the world.Â
A year before the book came out, speculation about its sourcing was rampant.
Gawker
leaked
Mezrichâs initial proposal, noting that the story leaned heavily on Saverinâs account and that âmany facts seem off.â In particular, the blog questioned a bizarre scene in which one of the founders of Sun Microsystems invites Zuckerberg to eat koala on his yacht. When
The New York Times
later obtained an early galley, it
highlighted
other âpossible fabrications,â including a moment where Zuckerberg leaves a San Francisco party with a Victoriaâs Secret model. (At that point, Zuckerberg was already dating his now-wife, Chan.) When the
Times
reached out to the bookâs publisher, a publicist shrugged off concerns of veracity, saying: âThis is not reportage. It is big, juicy fun.â
Even with Gawker Mediaâ
s
steady drumbeat of criticism and the occasional privacy flare-up, Zuckerberg still enjoyed a relatively peaceful, even flattering relationship with the media. His interviews with
Wired
and
Techcrunch
were never hostile, and mostly portrayed him as a young, awkward, and very, very smart entrepreneur. In the business press, he was
genuinely
admired
for building a company that was well on its way to an IPO at the tender age of 25. Shortly after the movie came out, his blank expression even appeared on the cover of
Time
magazineâs âPerson of the Yearâ issueâsomething that now seems unthinkable. â
The Social Network
is a rich, dramatic portrait of a furious, socially handicapped genius who spits corrosive monologues in a monotone to hide his inner pain,â the storyâs author, Lev Grossman,
wrote
. âThis character bears almost no resemblance to the actual Mark Zuckerberg. The reality is much more complicated.â
The Movie
When
The Social Network
hit theaters in 2010, Facebook was the tech industryâs golden goose egg, and Zuckerberg its attentive countryman in menswear basics. It was the
most visited
website in the United States. Its hacker-friendly slogan âMove Fast and Break Things,â earned it a reputation in the Valley as a bold, forward-thinking innovator that wasnât afraid to take risks. And, thanks in part to the growth of the companyâs advertising operations, it would earn about $2 billion in revenue that year.
Related
Related
Most importantly, the public had come to see Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg as one and the same. When the website launched in 2004, the phrase âA Mark Zuckerberg Productionâ was stamped at the bottom of every single page. In subsequent years, the CEO was frequently
quoted
in
The
Harvard Crimson
and other Ivy League newspapers discussing new features. At one point, he even
returned
to his alma mater to recruit people to work there. As his cabal of engineers rolled out new features from their raucous Palo Alto incubator, Mark led by example, tagging himself in photos and feverishly âlikingâ things. I was in the final class of students who received their college emails and joined Facebook, before it was opened up to the public, and seeing a tech CEO use social media at all felt intimate, novel. I recall thinking of Zuckerberg as a kind of millennial icon who was using his superior coding skills to enhance our social lives. A somewhat bland one, but an icon nonetheless.
Whatever goodwill Zuckerberg had earned by making a fun platform ran thinner as Facebook pushed to expand. In 2006, the company premiered âNews Feedââthe now-standard homepage that summarizes the profile changes, posts, birthdays, and upcoming events of everyone in a userâs social networkâand faced its first real privacy scandal. People complained the update made it too easy for other people to track their individual activities. A âStudents Against Facebook News Feedâ group was started, and gained over 100,000 members in a day. TV stations and protestors lined up on the street outside of the companyâs Palo Alto office. Zuckerberg responded to the fervor in a Facebook
post
titled âCalm Down. Breathe. We Hear You.â âStalking isnât cool, but being able to know whatâs going on in your friendsâ lives is,â he wrote with frat boy confidence, promising to add privacy tools.Â
But after the dust settled from that incident, little versions of the News Feed saga kept happening again and again and again. Journalists soon began to posit that Facebookâs cavalier privacy efforts were not a result of inexperience, but of its leaderâs stubborn indifference to criticism and disdain for users. In May of 2010, Nicholas Carlson unearthed an instant message exchange from Zuckerbergâs Harvard days in which the CEO offers an unnamed friend access to his fellow classmatesâ information. âI have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS,â he wrote. âWhat? Howâd you manage that one,â the anonymous recipient of these messages responded. âPeople just submitted it,â Zuckerberg
concluded
. âI donât know why. They âtrust me.â Dumb fucks.â In a mostly flattering
New Yorker
profile
that Facebook
timed
to come out ahead of
The Social Network
âs release, Zuckerberg said he regretted these messages, but they nonetheless seemed to confirm an increasingly frustrated publicâs suspicions that, no matter how many public pledges Zuckerberg made to protect user data, he was sitting in a giant mansion somewhere, snickering at all the chumps whoâd trusted him.Â
Related
Related
The team entrusted with making
The Social Network
would only build off that impression. Once
Gawker
leaked Mezrichâs proposal, the film adaptation was set in motion. Aaron Sorkin, then famous for his loquacious political drama
The West Wing
, signed on to write the script, and David Fincher, whoâd earned a reputation for composing intellectual thrillers like
Fight Club
and
Zodiac
, would direct. Together, they cast a trio of hot 20-something actors: Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as Saverin, and singer Justin Timberlake as Parker. Scott Rudin, one of the filmâs producers, attempted to secure Facebookâs cooperation, but the company considered any material sourced from
Accidental Billionaires
to be fiction. In the end, the team felt it had enough public records to stick with the Mezrich treatment anyway. Sorkin said he nevertheless took âextra careâ knowing his subjects were real people. âYou feel a special responsibility, knowing what a loud sound a Hollywood movie makes,â he later told
The Hollywood Reporter
.
Though Sorkinâs script contains no koala entrĂŠes, the moments in which he chose to exercise his creative liberties were some of the most memorable. Specifically when he imagines
a breakup
between Zuckerberg and the woman who inspired FaceMash in the first few minutes of the movie. In the subsequent drunken code-a-thon that follows, Sorkin embellishes Zuckerbergâs LiveJournal rant by adding a few more cruel lines about the fictitious exâs last name and bra size. Tonally, his version wasnât
so
different from Zuckerbergâs original entries, or even your average Reddit post. Butâcombined with the made-up breakup and the fact that Chan was completely left out of the filmâSorkinâs additions made Zuckerberg seem extra callous. In the movieâs closing scene, after the Facebook creator has betrayed his collaborators and claimed his place atop the social totem pole, he returns to that same exâs Facebook profile, refreshing it over and over again to see whether she has accepted his friend request. As history would prove, it was just the right amount of real and fake to burrow deep into peopleâs brains as Facebook canon.Â
The Reception
As emails from the 2014 Sony hack
showed
, Zuckerberg had tried and failed to stop the film from being made. So ahead of its release, Facebookâs in-house PR agency, Outcast,
devised
a strategy to avoid slamming the film or attacking its creators. Instead, they would offer a counternarrative, in
The New Yorker
and, with help from cofounder Chris Hughes, in
The New York Times
. When
NPRâs Guy Raz asked about the film in 2010
, Zuckerberg called it âfiction.âÂ
Internally, Facebook tried to embrace the film. On opening weekend, it held an all-staff showing at Century Cinema 16 in Mountain View (which, coincidentally, was also where I saw
Independence Day
,
Jack
, and many other classics as a kid). âWe had some fun with it,â Mark Zuckerberg
said
during a Q&A years later, after it became clear the movie would not go away. âI mean we knew that everyone who works at Facebook was going to want to see it anyway, because how often does someone make a major movie about your company?â Zuckerberg added that, for a while after the showing, Facebook employees would make fun of him by mixing appletinis in the officeâa reference to the scene in the movie where his character first meets Parker and consumes several of the cocktails.
But to viewers who didnât work at Facebook,
The Social Network
depicted a more sinister version of the 20-something to whom millions of users had entrusted their photos, birthdays, and interests. A version who trampled over his fellow studentsâ security in the name of a tasteless prank, who willingly pushed his friends and classmates out of the way to get what he wanted, and who was far less interested in Facebookâs stated mission of âconnecting peopleâ than he was in consolidating power. As
Times
reviewer Manohla Dargis
put it
:
The price of that ambition, at least as dramatized here, is borne by those around Mark, who remains a strategic cipher throughout: a Facebook page without a profile photo. Charmless and awkward in groups larger than one, he rarely breaks into a smile and, if memory serves, never says thank you. He seems wary at some moments, coolly calculating at others: When his eyes havenât gone dead, you can see him working all the angles.
His tech-industry peers took less precaution to separate fact from fiction. âIt says something about the characters in a film, and in the valley, when the most likable characters are the lawyers,â one tech worker
tweeted
. Another chimed, âI donât know whether to hate Zuck or Parker or try to become them. Or both.â Tech journalist Jon Dube summarized the public sentiment most succinctly: âMade Zuck look pretty bad.âÂ
The movie was an immediate hit, grossing $224.9 million worldwide. It earned eight Academy Award nominations and three actual Oscars. The
Times
staff apparently covered it so much that it became the subject of a
Variety
column
. And it soon became a beloved,
oft-parodied
fixture in popular culture. The same month the movie premiered, a
Forbes
poll
found
that â63 percent of Americans didnât trust Facebook with their personal information.â
The Corporate Makeover
Following the release of a major-motion picture that made its founder look like a socially inept hacker, the company needed to run damage control, especially given
the IPO
on the horizon. Privately, Zuckerberg would spend the next few years ensuring he was protected from the public eye,
spending
$30 million on the four homes that surrounded his Palo Alto property, building a 6-foot lava rock wall around his 700-acre estate in Kauai, and hiring a
private security detail
to patrol the perimeters of his properties (and,
apparently
, protect his trash). But publicly, he embarked on a campaign to soften his image. The
day
the film premiered, he went on
Oprah
to announce he was giving a $100 million grant to the Newark school system. A few months later, he
appeared
on
Saturday Night Live
where he and the host, Jesse Eisenberg, made awkward small talk. He
got
a Hungarian sheepdog named Beast and made it a Facebook page. He
reduced
his annual salary to $1 a year.Â
Facebook later created
an entire team
to maintain Zuckerbergâs Facebook profile. Some of them deleted harassing comments on the threads he posted, others followed him around and took professional photos as he went for a run or hung out with his family. His annual New Yearâs resolutions evolved from simple stuff like âwear a tie everydayâ in 2009, to symbolic endeavors like âmeet a person from every U.S. stateâ in 2017. His staff even went so far as to
quietly delete
all his old Facebook messenger conversations. Occasional telling tidbitsâlike Zuckerbergâs affinity for the game
Risk
âwould filter through the press, buttressing the myth of the domineering nerd, but outwardly he maintained the polished aura of a CEO, with more production value and much, much less personality.
Related
Related
He also made a point to improve his public speaking. The old Mark Zuckerberg preferred to let his employees run meetings while occasionally yelling the word âDomination!â into the ether. But in late 2014, the new Zuck 2.0 would stream live âTown Hallsâ from his Facebook page, answering questions on a range of topics from employees and users. During the very first session at the companyâs Menlo Park headquarters, the mic was handed to a woman named Lori who had flown in from Povo, Utah, to repeat a question she had posted on one of the CEOâs threads. âIâm a huge movie fan, and one of my top-10 favorite movies is
The Social Network
, and my question has always been to you: How accurate is the story compared to the real-life story of Facebookâs beginnings?â
Zuckerberg laughed nervously. âWow, I havenât spent a lot of time thinking about that movie in a while,â he said, âI kinda blocked that one out.â He then went on to make several points. That, one, his life was far less interesting than the movie made it out to be: âThe reality is that writing a code and then building a product and then building a company actually is not a glamorous enough thing to make a movie about, so you can imagine that a lot of the stuff they probably had to embellish and make up. Because if they were really making a movie, it wouldâve been of me sitting at a computer and coding for two hours straight, which probably wouldâve just not been that good of a movie. And these guys, I think, want to win awards and sell tickets. So thatâs kind of where they went with it.â Two, that he had never met the people whoâd made the movie about his life, aside from his brief encounter with Eisenberg: âI think he was a little afraid to meet me, after his portrayal, but I tried to be nice.â Three, the premise of the movieâthat Zuckerberg was motivated to make Facebook so he could meet girlsâwas messed up. âThey just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful.â And four, heâd begun dating Chan before he even started Facebook. (This is technically true. The two met in the bathroom line of the preemptive âgoing-away partyâ his Jewish frat threw him after heâd met with Harvardâs administrative board about the FaceMash incident.) In sum: âI think the real story is just, you know, a lot of hard work.âÂ
The Legacy
Zuckerbergâs motivations for maintaining an air-tight public persona have shifted over the years, away from his
Social Network
portrayal and toward a steady stream of scandals. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, and accusations of social media bubbles and Russian interference soared, Zuckerberg embarked on a public relations
tour
of roughly 30 states with a professional photographer in tow. He
pet
a service dog in Montana,
drove
a tractor in Wisconsin, and
watched
a rodeo in Texas. Each stop warranted its own crisp Facebook post, and each update seemed more careful and apolitical than the previous. After heâd finally completed the project he gave a Q&A about what heâd learned, concluding, blandly, that âthe biggest takeaway by far is that community, and especially local community, are much more important to people than we realize.â It appeared Zuckerbergâs aim was to demonstrate to users he didnât think of them as numbers, or chumps, but peopleâeven if the way Facebook operates indicated otherwise. But without any kind of political bent or spice to his messaging, the campaign felt weird, like after years hidden away behind a computer he was on a quest to learn about the human race for the very first time.Â
The more canned Zuckerberg has become, the more the public has turned to his silver screen depiction for answers.
The Social Network
is stamped into the companyâs DNA. As Steven Levy describes in the first chapter of
Facebook: The Inside Story
, Zuckerberg is asked about the movie in places as far flung as Nigeria. In 2018,
The New Yorker
reported
that Facebook executives still refer to
The Social Network
resentfully as âthe movie.â âFrom its facts to its essence to its portrayal, I think that was a very unfair picture,â Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in the same piece. âI still think it forms the basis of a lot of what people believe about Mark.â Ahead of one of the most consequential presidential elections in recent history, the public continues to take stock of Facebookâs negative effect on public discourse, news, and democracy. And in those terms, David Fincherâs masterpiece has felt all the more
relevant
; spiritually, if not factually, correct. More than anything, in a 10-year vacuum of personality, the better story won. |
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Sept. 22, 2020, 10:30 am UTC
⢠17 min
[Movies](https://www.theringer.com/topic/movies)
# Ten Years Later, Mark Zuckerberg Is Still Trying to Overcome âThe Social Networkâ
How David Fincherâs masterpiece became a tech CEOâs origin storyâeven if itâs not totally true.
[Movies](https://www.theringer.com/topic/movies)
# Ten Years Later, Mark Zuckerberg Is Still Trying to Overcome âThe Social Networkâ
How David Fincherâs masterpiece became a tech CEOâs origin storyâeven if itâs not totally true.
Adam Villacin
[](https://www.theringer.com/creator/alyssa-bereznak)
By [Alyssa Bereznak](https://www.theringer.com/creator/alyssa-bereznak)
Sept. 22, 2020, 10:30 am UTC
⢠17 min
*On the cusp of the 25th anniversary of* Se7en *and the 10th anniversary of* The Social Network*,* The Ringer *hereby dubs Sept. 21-25* [*David Fincher Week*](https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/9/21/21449056/david-fincher-week-the-ringer)*. Join us all throughout the week as we celebrate and examine the man, the myth, and his impeccable body of work.*
***
In 2017, Mark Zuckerberg returned to Harvard for a victory lap that most people can only dream of. Twelve years after the Facebook CEO dropped out of school to run what would become the largest online social network in the world, the elite Ivy League would give him an honorary degree. Facebook celebrated the event as an opportunity to showcase the companyâs history and display a more personal side of its CEO, organizing a few public broadcasts ahead of the speech. One of those included a visit to Kirkland House H33, the room where it all started.
âThis is the first time that weâve been back in this dorm since I left,â Zuckerberg said in a Facebook Live video that he was filming from his smartphone. With his college sweetheart [Priscilla Chan](https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-mark-zuckerbergs-wife-priscilla-chan-2014-6#they-honeymooned-in-italy-but-had-a-pretty-casual-vacation-they-were-spotted-eating-mcdonalds-for-a-meal-while-abroad-18) in tow, he directed viewers toward his old desk, and the rooms where his Facebook cofounders (and then-roommates) Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes worked and slept. After some reminiscing about tiny bed sizes and dining hall cuisine, he addressed an incident that has, over the span of the past decade, become millennial folklore.
âOne weekend I wanted to build this prank website, FaceMash,â he said with his signature indecipherable smile. âI basically sat here for, like, three days straight, and just coded this thing. And it was a prank. It was kind of funny but also a little bit in poor taste.â He summarized how it spread quickly, froze his laptop, and caused Harvard officials to turn off the entire dormâs internet connection. âThat was probably one of my more memorable moments from Kirkland House, just sitting here, and, like, Iâm trying to fix this, Dustinâs trying to do his computer-science problem set, Chris is trying to write some paper for social studies or whatever heâs studying, and all the sudden the internet goes dark.â
> Live from my old dorm room at Harvard.
>
> Posted by [Mark Zuckerberg](https://www.facebook.com/zuck) on Tuesday, May 23, 2017
As Zuckerberg tells it, the story of FaceMash was nothing more than an innocent college gag that ended in a night of forced unproductivity. But chances are, most people watching that day remember it differently, as the riveting sequence of events at the start of a major Hollywood blockbuster called *The Social Network*. After conquering the business world, Zuckerberg had finally earned the approval of the elite institution heâd once antagonized. But sitting at his old dorm room desk years later, it seemed his one remaining challenge was to reclaim his past.
In the decade since *The Social Networkâ*s release, Facebook has become so omnipresent and unregulated that no misstepâwhether related to [privacy](https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/3/22/17153360/facebook-cambridge-analytica-explainer), [anti-trust](https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/11/19/18102162/tim-wu-facebook-antitrust-law-book-curse-of-bigness) [laws](https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2019/attorney-general-james-gives-update-facebook-antitrust-investigation), [geopolitics](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo), or [genocide](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html)âhas managed to etch away at its dominance. Because Zuckerberg holds control of somewhere around [60 percent](https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-stock-nyt-wsj) of Facebookâs voting shares, he alone can determine what people see when they log on to Facebook and Instagram, what privacy settings they have access to, and the difference between violent and incendiary speech. As Chris Hughes, that same cofounder he roomed with back at Harvard, [wrote in a 2019 *New York* *Times* op-ed](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/sunday/chris-hughes-facebook-zuckerberg.html), âMarkâs influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government.â
In tandem with that growing influence, Zuckerbergâs public persona is now so heavily managed that youâd have a better time deciphering the feelings of [the AI assistant he once built](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-jarvis/10154361492931634) to run his house than determining what heâs *really* thinking. Maybe thatâs why Aaron Sorkinâs version of the ambitious boy hacker still clings to the publicâs imagination. The more Zuckerberg has been shrouded in corporate armor, the more people have turned to his silver-screen depiction for clues.
How exactly did a Hollywood film beat the [most powerful unelected man](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/opinion/facebook-zuckerberg-2020-election.html) in America at telling his own origin story? It all begins with an enterprising science-fiction writer with a penchant for, uh, literary embellishment.
### The Book
Before Ben Mezrich [signed](http://web.archive.org/web/20080526202730/https://gawker.com/392575/tell+all-book-zuckerberg-set-up-facebook-to-get-laid) what was reportedly a million-dollar-plus book deal to write *The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal*, his reporting credentials had been dragged through the mud. His previous book, *Bringing Down the House*, about a troupe of MIT students who used advanced blackjack techniques to win millions of dollars in Vegas, was the first âtrueâ story heâd ever written, and it showed. Not long after it came out in 2002, its main characters [debunked](http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/06/house_of_cards/) its most lurid details: They did not collaborate with strippers to cash their chips, the underground Chinatown casino where they supposedly practiced didnât exist, and a private detective with ânarrow ice-blue eyesâ never beat them up in a casino bathroom. Still, those flourishes helped Mezrich more than they hurt him. The book sold over 1 million copies, and eventually became a Kevin Spaceyâproduced heist film called *21\.*
With *Accidental Billionaires*, it was more of the same. The bookâs first cover advertised a tale of college debauchery with a slinky red bra and broken martini glass. Its narrative goes like this: Zuckerberg is a dorky nobody who, like everyone else at Harvard, is determined to join one of the schoolâs elite social clubs. (Mezrich, a Harvard graduate himself, emphasizes in vivid, knowing detail just how important this kind of membership is to meeting women and getting laid.) Scorned by a mystery woman one evening, Zuckerberg gets drunk in his dorm room and revenge-codes a campus-specific [Hot or Not](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_or_Not) site.
That part, at least, was a real-life incident that was [documented](https://web.archive.org/web/20180330093248/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-battle-for-facebook-20100915) in the LiveJournal updates Zuckerberg used to narrate his creation of the burgeoning social media tool: âJessica Aâ is a bitch,â he wrote. âI need to think of something to take my mind off her. I need to think of something to occupy my mind. Easy enough, now I just need an idea.â Another entry: âIâm a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if itâs not even 10 p.m. and itâs a Tuesday night? What? The Kirkland facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.â Later: âYea, itâs on. Iâm not exactly sure how the farm animals are going to fit into this whole thing (you canât really ever be sure with farm animals . . .), but I like the idea of comparing two people together.â
FaceMash goes viral and inspires Zuckerberg to make something bigger. Meanwhile, two pedigreed rowers named Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss ask him to help with their own campus social network. He leads them on, while partnering with his best friend, Eduardo Saverin, to create a fast-growing competing product. Eventually, Sean Parker, the cofounder of Napster, swoops in whispering sweet nothings of VC funding in Zuckerbergâs ear. The two hatch a scheme to push Saverin out of the company. (Parkerâs affinity for women and parties, meanwhile, seals his fate.) Zuckerberg emerges alone atop the fastest growing social network in the world.
A year before the book came out, speculation about its sourcing was rampant. *Gawker* [leaked](http://web.archive.org/web/20080526202730/https://gawker.com/392575/tell+all-book-zuckerberg-set-up-facebook-to-get-laid) Mezrichâs initial proposal, noting that the story leaned heavily on Saverinâs account and that âmany facts seem off.â In particular, the blog questioned a bizarre scene in which one of the founders of Sun Microsystems invites Zuckerberg to eat koala on his yacht. When *The New York Times* later obtained an early galley, it [highlighted](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/a-new-book-on-facebook-some-of-it-fact-based/) other âpossible fabrications,â including a moment where Zuckerberg leaves a San Francisco party with a Victoriaâs Secret model. (At that point, Zuckerberg was already dating his now-wife, Chan.) When the *Times* reached out to the bookâs publisher, a publicist shrugged off concerns of veracity, saying: âThis is not reportage. It is big, juicy fun.â
Even with Gawker Mediaâ*s* steady drumbeat of criticism and the occasional privacy flare-up, Zuckerberg still enjoyed a relatively peaceful, even flattering relationship with the media. His interviews with [*Wired*](https://www.wired.com/2009/06/mark-zuckerberg-speaks/) and [*Techcrunch*](https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/24/startup-school-an-interview-with-mark-zuckerberg/) were never hostile, and mostly portrayed him as a young, awkward, and very, very smart entrepreneur. In the business press, he was [genuinely](https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-innovation-2009-10) [admired](https://venturebeat.com/2009/10/02/mark-zuckerberg-the-evolution-of-a-remarkable-ceo/) for building a company that was well on its way to an IPO at the tender age of 25. Shortly after the movie came out, his blank expression even appeared on the cover of *Time* magazineâs âPerson of the Yearâ issueâsomething that now seems unthinkable. â*The Social Network* is a rich, dramatic portrait of a furious, socially handicapped genius who spits corrosive monologues in a monotone to hide his inner pain,â the storyâs author, Lev Grossman, [wrote](https://web.archive.org/web/20110101031046/https://time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183,00.html). âThis character bears almost no resemblance to the actual Mark Zuckerberg. The reality is much more complicated.â
### The Movie
When *The Social Network* hit theaters in 2010, Facebook was the tech industryâs golden goose egg, and Zuckerberg its attentive countryman in menswear basics. It was the [most visited](https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/29/hitwise-facebook-overtakes-google-to-become-most-visited-website-in-2010/#:~:text=Hitwise%3A%20Facebook%20Overtakes%20Google%20To%20Become%20Most%20Visited%20Website%20In%202010,-Alexia%20Tsotsis%40alexia) website in the United States. Its hacker-friendly slogan âMove Fast and Break Things,â earned it a reputation in the Valley as a bold, forward-thinking innovator that wasnât afraid to take risks. And, thanks in part to the growth of the companyâs advertising operations, it would earn about \$2 billion in revenue that year.
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Most importantly, the public had come to see Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg as one and the same. When the website launched in 2004, the phrase âA Mark Zuckerberg Productionâ was stamped at the bottom of every single page. In subsequent years, the CEO was frequently [quoted](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register-for-new-facebook-website/) in *The* *Harvard Crimson* and other Ivy League newspapers discussing new features. At one point, he even [returned](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/11/1/zuckerberg-to-leave-harvard-indefinitely-mark/) to his alma mater to recruit people to work there. As his cabal of engineers rolled out new features from their raucous Palo Alto incubator, Mark led by example, tagging himself in photos and feverishly âlikingâ things. I was in the final class of students who received their college emails and joined Facebook, before it was opened up to the public, and seeing a tech CEO use social media at all felt intimate, novel. I recall thinking of Zuckerberg as a kind of millennial icon who was using his superior coding skills to enhance our social lives. A somewhat bland one, but an icon nonetheless.
Whatever goodwill Zuckerberg had earned by making a fun platform ran thinner as Facebook pushed to expand. In 2006, the company premiered âNews Feedââthe now-standard homepage that summarizes the profile changes, posts, birthdays, and upcoming events of everyone in a userâs social networkâand faced its first real privacy scandal. People complained the update made it too easy for other people to track their individual activities. A âStudents Against Facebook News Feedâ group was started, and gained over 100,000 members in a day. TV stations and protestors lined up on the street outside of the companyâs Palo Alto office. Zuckerberg responded to the fervor in a Facebook [post](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-app/calm-down-breathe-we-hear-you/2208197130/) titled âCalm Down. Breathe. We Hear You.â âStalking isnât cool, but being able to know whatâs going on in your friendsâ lives is,â he wrote with frat boy confidence, promising to add privacy tools.
But after the dust settled from that incident, little versions of the News Feed saga kept happening again and again and again. Journalists soon began to posit that Facebookâs cavalier privacy efforts were not a result of inexperience, but of its leaderâs stubborn indifference to criticism and disdain for users. In May of 2010, Nicholas Carlson unearthed an instant message exchange from Zuckerbergâs Harvard days in which the CEO offers an unnamed friend access to his fellow classmatesâ information. âI have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS,â he wrote. âWhat? Howâd you manage that one,â the anonymous recipient of these messages responded. âPeople just submitted it,â Zuckerberg [concluded](https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5). âI donât know why. They âtrust me.â Dumb fucks.â In a mostly flattering *New Yorker* [profile](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-facebook) that Facebook [timed](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-social-network-pr-28618) to come out ahead of *The Social Network*âs release, Zuckerberg said he regretted these messages, but they nonetheless seemed to confirm an increasingly frustrated publicâs suspicions that, no matter how many public pledges Zuckerberg made to protect user data, he was sitting in a giant mansion somewhere, snickering at all the chumps whoâd trusted him.
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The team entrusted with making *The Social Network* would only build off that impression. Once *Gawker* leaked Mezrichâs proposal, the film adaptation was set in motion. Aaron Sorkin, then famous for his loquacious political drama [*The West Wing*](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/aaron-sorkin-potential-rams-pats-sequel-kyries-leadership/id1043699613?i=1000427900880&mt=2), signed on to write the script, and David Fincher, whoâd earned a reputation for composing intellectual thrillers like [*Fight Club*](https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/3/26/18281406/fight-club-davis-fincher-making-of-brad-pitt-edward-norton) and [*Zodiac*](https://www.theringer.com/2017/7/25/16077982/zodiac-ten-year-anniversary-david-fincher-great-film-93d9cf2f70f6), would direct. Together, they cast a trio of hot 20-something actors: Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as Saverin, and singer Justin Timberlake as Parker. Scott Rudin, one of the filmâs producers, attempted to secure Facebookâs cooperation, but the company considered any material sourced from *Accidental Billionaires* to be fiction. In the end, the team felt it had enough public records to stick with the Mezrich treatment anyway. Sorkin said he nevertheless took âextra careâ knowing his subjects were real people. âYou feel a special responsibility, knowing what a loud sound a Hollywood movie makes,â he later told [*The Hollywood Reporter*](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/anatomy-contender-social-network-56684).
Though Sorkinâs script contains no koala entrĂŠes, the moments in which he chose to exercise his creative liberties were some of the most memorable. Specifically when he imagines [a breakup](https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/9/21/21448572/social-network-opening-scene-david-fincher) between Zuckerberg and the woman who inspired FaceMash in the first few minutes of the movie. In the subsequent drunken code-a-thon that follows, Sorkin embellishes Zuckerbergâs LiveJournal rant by adding a few more cruel lines about the fictitious exâs last name and bra size. Tonally, his version wasnât *so* different from Zuckerbergâs original entries, or even your average Reddit post. Butâcombined with the made-up breakup and the fact that Chan was completely left out of the filmâSorkinâs additions made Zuckerberg seem extra callous. In the movieâs closing scene, after the Facebook creator has betrayed his collaborators and claimed his place atop the social totem pole, he returns to that same exâs Facebook profile, refreshing it over and over again to see whether she has accepted his friend request. As history would prove, it was just the right amount of real and fake to burrow deep into peopleâs brains as Facebook canon.
### The Reception
As emails from the 2014 Sony hack [showed](https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-tried-to-stop-the-social-network-from-being-made-2014-12), Zuckerberg had tried and failed to stop the film from being made. So ahead of its release, Facebookâs in-house PR agency, Outcast, [devised](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-social-network-pr-28618) a strategy to avoid slamming the film or attacking its creators. Instead, they would offer a counternarrative, in *The New Yorker* and, with help from cofounder Chris Hughes, in [*The New York Times*](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/business/media/21facebook.html). When [NPRâs Guy Raz asked about the film in 2010](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/128744904), Zuckerberg called it âfiction.â
Internally, Facebook tried to embrace the film. On opening weekend, it held an all-staff showing at Century Cinema 16 in Mountain View (which, coincidentally, was also where I saw *Independence Day*, *Jack*, and many other classics as a kid). âWe had some fun with it,â Mark Zuckerberg [said](https://www.facebook.com/qawithmark/videos/828790510512059/) during a Q\&A years later, after it became clear the movie would not go away. âI mean we knew that everyone who works at Facebook was going to want to see it anyway, because how often does someone make a major movie about your company?â Zuckerberg added that, for a while after the showing, Facebook employees would make fun of him by mixing appletinis in the officeâa reference to the scene in the movie where his character first meets Parker and consumes several of the cocktails.
But to viewers who didnât work at Facebook, *The Social Network* depicted a more sinister version of the 20-something to whom millions of users had entrusted their photos, birthdays, and interests. A version who trampled over his fellow studentsâ security in the name of a tasteless prank, who willingly pushed his friends and classmates out of the way to get what he wanted, and who was far less interested in Facebookâs stated mission of âconnecting peopleâ than he was in consolidating power. As *Times* reviewer Manohla Dargis [put it](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/movies/24nyffsocial.html):
> The price of that ambition, at least as dramatized here, is borne by those around Mark, who remains a strategic cipher throughout: a Facebook page without a profile photo. Charmless and awkward in groups larger than one, he rarely breaks into a smile and, if memory serves, never says thank you. He seems wary at some moments, coolly calculating at others: When his eyes havenât gone dead, you can see him working all the angles.
His tech-industry peers took less precaution to separate fact from fiction. âIt says something about the characters in a film, and in the valley, when the most likable characters are the lawyers,â one tech worker [tweeted](https://mashable.com/2010/09/29/the-social-network-panel/). Another chimed, âI donât know whether to hate Zuck or Parker or try to become them. Or both.â Tech journalist Jon Dube summarized the public sentiment most succinctly: âMade Zuck look pretty bad.â
The movie was an immediate hit, grossing \$224.9 million worldwide. It earned eight Academy Award nominations and three actual Oscars. The *Times* staff apparently covered it so much that it became the subject of a *Variety* [column](https://variety.com/2010/voices/opinion/ny-times-columnists-love-the-social-network-4127/). And it soon became a beloved, [oft-parodied](https://theweek.com/articles/490568/6-best-spoofs-social-network-trailer) fixture in popular culture. The same month the movie premiered, a *Forbes* poll [found](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1011/rich-list-10-technology-facebook-google-laws-zuckerberg-we-trust.html#7e8b99f221b6) that â63 percent of Americans didnât trust Facebook with their personal information.â
### The Corporate Makeover
Following the release of a major-motion picture that made its founder look like a socially inept hacker, the company needed to run damage control, especially given [the IPO](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703730704576066162770600234) on the horizon. Privately, Zuckerberg would spend the next few years ensuring he was protected from the public eye, [spending](https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/national-international/mark-zuckerberg-buys-neighbors-houses-for-30-million/1964902/) \$30 million on the four homes that surrounded his Palo Alto property, building a 6-foot lava rock wall around his 700-acre estate in Kauai, and hiring a [private security detail](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Mark-Zuckerberg-s-SF-security-detail-under-siege-11274376.php) to patrol the perimeters of his properties (and, [apparently](https://theoutline.com/post/3994/it-is-weirdly-hard-to-steal-mark-zuckerbergs-trash), protect his trash). But publicly, he embarked on a campaign to soften his image. The [day](https://www.fastcompany.com/1691042/mark-zuckerberg-announces-details-100-million-grant-newark-schools) the film premiered, he went on *Oprah* to announce he was giving a \$100 million grant to the Newark school system. A few months later, he [appeared](https://mashable.com/2011/01/29/zuckerberg-on-snl/) on *Saturday Night Live* where he and the host, Jesse Eisenberg, made awkward small talk. He [got](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/03/07/mark-zuckerberg-gets-a-dog-gives-it-a-facebook-page/#6b2d95f378c4) a Hungarian sheepdog named Beast and made it a Facebook page. He [reduced](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312513178090/d493645ddef14a.htm) his annual salary to \$1 a year.
Facebook later created [an entire team](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team-runs-mark-zuckerberg-s-facebook-page) to maintain Zuckerbergâs Facebook profile. Some of them deleted harassing comments on the threads he posted, others followed him around and took professional photos as he went for a run or hung out with his family. His annual New Yearâs resolutions evolved from simple stuff like âwear a tie everydayâ in 2009, to symbolic endeavors like âmeet a person from every U.S. stateâ in 2017. His staff even went so far as to [quietly delete](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/6/17203114/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-messages-deleted-messenger-inbox#:~:text=Facebook%20has%20admitted%20the%20company,founder%20and%20CEO%20Mark%20Zuckerberg.&text=Old%20Facebook%20messages%20sent%20by,Facebook's%20download%20your%20information%20tool.) all his old Facebook messenger conversations. Occasional telling tidbitsâlike Zuckerbergâs affinity for the game [*Risk*](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/will-mark-zuckerberg-be-our-next-president)âwould filter through the press, buttressing the myth of the domineering nerd, but outwardly he maintained the polished aura of a CEO, with more production value and much, much less personality.
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He also made a point to improve his public speaking. The old Mark Zuckerberg preferred to let his employees run meetings while occasionally yelling the word âDomination!â into the ether. But in late 2014, the new Zuck 2.0 would stream live âTown Hallsâ from his Facebook page, answering questions on a range of topics from employees and users. During the very first session at the companyâs Menlo Park headquarters, the mic was handed to a woman named Lori who had flown in from Povo, Utah, to repeat a question she had posted on one of the CEOâs threads. âIâm a huge movie fan, and one of my top-10 favorite movies is *The Social Network*, and my question has always been to you: How accurate is the story compared to the real-life story of Facebookâs beginnings?â
Zuckerberg laughed nervously. âWow, I havenât spent a lot of time thinking about that movie in a while,â he said, âI kinda blocked that one out.â He then went on to make several points. That, one, his life was far less interesting than the movie made it out to be: âThe reality is that writing a code and then building a product and then building a company actually is not a glamorous enough thing to make a movie about, so you can imagine that a lot of the stuff they probably had to embellish and make up. Because if they were really making a movie, it wouldâve been of me sitting at a computer and coding for two hours straight, which probably wouldâve just not been that good of a movie. And these guys, I think, want to win awards and sell tickets. So thatâs kind of where they went with it.â Two, that he had never met the people whoâd made the movie about his life, aside from his brief encounter with Eisenberg: âI think he was a little afraid to meet me, after his portrayal, but I tried to be nice.â Three, the premise of the movieâthat Zuckerberg was motivated to make Facebook so he could meet girlsâwas messed up. âThey just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful.â And four, heâd begun dating Chan before he even started Facebook. (This is technically true. The two met in the bathroom line of the preemptive âgoing-away partyâ his Jewish frat threw him after heâd met with Harvardâs administrative board about the FaceMash incident.) In sum: âI think the real story is just, you know, a lot of hard work.â
### The Legacy
Zuckerbergâs motivations for maintaining an air-tight public persona have shifted over the years, away from his *Social Network* portrayal and toward a steady stream of scandals. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, and accusations of social media bubbles and Russian interference soared, Zuckerberg embarked on a public relations [tour](https://www.vox.com/2017/4/25/15421386/follow-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-year-journey-around-united-states) of roughly 30 states with a professional photographer in tow. He [pet](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103889279175151?pnref=story) a service dog in Montana, [drove](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103688679303901?pnref=story) a tractor in Wisconsin, and [watched](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10103423541247691&set=a.529237706231&type=3) a rodeo in Texas. Each stop warranted its own crisp Facebook post, and each update seemed more careful and apolitical than the previous. After heâd finally completed the project he gave a Q\&A about what heâd learned, concluding, blandly, that âthe biggest takeaway by far is that community, and especially local community, are much more important to people than we realize.â It appeared Zuckerbergâs aim was to demonstrate to users he didnât think of them as numbers, or chumps, but peopleâeven if the way Facebook operates indicated otherwise. But without any kind of political bent or spice to his messaging, the campaign felt weird, like after years hidden away behind a computer he was on a quest to learn about the human race for the very first time.
The more canned Zuckerberg has become, the more the public has turned to his silver screen depiction for answers.*The Social Network* is stamped into the companyâs DNA. As Steven Levy describes in the first chapter of *Facebook: The Inside Story*, Zuckerberg is asked about the movie in places as far flung as Nigeria. In 2018, *The New Yorker* [reported](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy) that Facebook executives still refer to *The Social Network* resentfully as âthe movie.â âFrom its facts to its essence to its portrayal, I think that was a very unfair picture,â Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in the same piece. âI still think it forms the basis of a lot of what people believe about Mark.â Ahead of one of the most consequential presidential elections in recent history, the public continues to take stock of Facebookâs negative effect on public discourse, news, and democracy. And in those terms, David Fincherâs masterpiece has felt all the more [relevant](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/business/media/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-movie-the-social-network.html); spiritually, if not factually, correct. More than anything, in a 10-year vacuum of personality, the better story won.
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*On the cusp of the 25th anniversary of* Se7en *and the 10th anniversary of* The Social Network*,* The Ringer *hereby dubs Sept. 21-25* [*David Fincher Week*](https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/9/21/21449056/david-fincher-week-the-ringer)*. Join us all throughout the week as we celebrate and examine the man, the myth, and his impeccable body of work.*
***
In 2017, Mark Zuckerberg returned to Harvard for a victory lap that most people can only dream of. Twelve years after the Facebook CEO dropped out of school to run what would become the largest online social network in the world, the elite Ivy League would give him an honorary degree. Facebook celebrated the event as an opportunity to showcase the companyâs history and display a more personal side of its CEO, organizing a few public broadcasts ahead of the speech. One of those included a visit to Kirkland House H33, the room where it all started.
âThis is the first time that weâve been back in this dorm since I left,â Zuckerberg said in a Facebook Live video that he was filming from his smartphone. With his college sweetheart [Priscilla Chan](https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-mark-zuckerbergs-wife-priscilla-chan-2014-6#they-honeymooned-in-italy-but-had-a-pretty-casual-vacation-they-were-spotted-eating-mcdonalds-for-a-meal-while-abroad-18) in tow, he directed viewers toward his old desk, and the rooms where his Facebook cofounders (and then-roommates) Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes worked and slept. After some reminiscing about tiny bed sizes and dining hall cuisine, he addressed an incident that has, over the span of the past decade, become millennial folklore.
âOne weekend I wanted to build this prank website, FaceMash,â he said with his signature indecipherable smile. âI basically sat here for, like, three days straight, and just coded this thing. And it was a prank. It was kind of funny but also a little bit in poor taste.â He summarized how it spread quickly, froze his laptop, and caused Harvard officials to turn off the entire dormâs internet connection. âThat was probably one of my more memorable moments from Kirkland House, just sitting here, and, like, Iâm trying to fix this, Dustinâs trying to do his computer-science problem set, Chris is trying to write some paper for social studies or whatever heâs studying, and all the sudden the internet goes dark.â
> Live from my old dorm room at Harvard.
>
> Posted by [Mark Zuckerberg](https://www.facebook.com/zuck) on Tuesday, May 23, 2017
As Zuckerberg tells it, the story of FaceMash was nothing more than an innocent college gag that ended in a night of forced unproductivity. But chances are, most people watching that day remember it differently, as the riveting sequence of events at the start of a major Hollywood blockbuster called *The Social Network*. After conquering the business world, Zuckerberg had finally earned the approval of the elite institution heâd once antagonized. But sitting at his old dorm room desk years later, it seemed his one remaining challenge was to reclaim his past.
In the decade since *The Social Networkâ*s release, Facebook has become so omnipresent and unregulated that no misstepâwhether related to [privacy](https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/3/22/17153360/facebook-cambridge-analytica-explainer), [anti-trust](https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/11/19/18102162/tim-wu-facebook-antitrust-law-book-curse-of-bigness) [laws](https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2019/attorney-general-james-gives-update-facebook-antitrust-investigation), [geopolitics](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo), or [genocide](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html)âhas managed to etch away at its dominance. Because Zuckerberg holds control of somewhere around [60 percent](https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/11/19/18099011/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-stock-nyt-wsj) of Facebookâs voting shares, he alone can determine what people see when they log on to Facebook and Instagram, what privacy settings they have access to, and the difference between violent and incendiary speech. As Chris Hughes, that same cofounder he roomed with back at Harvard, [wrote in a 2019 *New York* *Times* op-ed](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/sunday/chris-hughes-facebook-zuckerberg.html), âMarkâs influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government.â
In tandem with that growing influence, Zuckerbergâs public persona is now so heavily managed that youâd have a better time deciphering the feelings of [the AI assistant he once built](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-jarvis/10154361492931634) to run his house than determining what heâs *really* thinking. Maybe thatâs why Aaron Sorkinâs version of the ambitious boy hacker still clings to the publicâs imagination. The more Zuckerberg has been shrouded in corporate armor, the more people have turned to his silver-screen depiction for clues.
How exactly did a Hollywood film beat the [most powerful unelected man](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/opinion/facebook-zuckerberg-2020-election.html) in America at telling his own origin story? It all begins with an enterprising science-fiction writer with a penchant for, uh, literary embellishment.
### The Book
Before Ben Mezrich [signed](http://web.archive.org/web/20080526202730/https://gawker.com/392575/tell+all-book-zuckerberg-set-up-facebook-to-get-laid) what was reportedly a million-dollar-plus book deal to write *The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal*, his reporting credentials had been dragged through the mud. His previous book, *Bringing Down the House*, about a troupe of MIT students who used advanced blackjack techniques to win millions of dollars in Vegas, was the first âtrueâ story heâd ever written, and it showed. Not long after it came out in 2002, its main characters [debunked](http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/06/house_of_cards/) its most lurid details: They did not collaborate with strippers to cash their chips, the underground Chinatown casino where they supposedly practiced didnât exist, and a private detective with ânarrow ice-blue eyesâ never beat them up in a casino bathroom. Still, those flourishes helped Mezrich more than they hurt him. The book sold over 1 million copies, and eventually became a Kevin Spaceyâproduced heist film called *21\.*
With *Accidental Billionaires*, it was more of the same. The bookâs first cover advertised a tale of college debauchery with a slinky red bra and broken martini glass. Its narrative goes like this: Zuckerberg is a dorky nobody who, like everyone else at Harvard, is determined to join one of the schoolâs elite social clubs. (Mezrich, a Harvard graduate himself, emphasizes in vivid, knowing detail just how important this kind of membership is to meeting women and getting laid.) Scorned by a mystery woman one evening, Zuckerberg gets drunk in his dorm room and revenge-codes a campus-specific [Hot or Not](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_or_Not) site.
That part, at least, was a real-life incident that was [documented](https://web.archive.org/web/20180330093248/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-battle-for-facebook-20100915) in the LiveJournal updates Zuckerberg used to narrate his creation of the burgeoning social media tool: âJessica Aâ is a bitch,â he wrote. âI need to think of something to take my mind off her. I need to think of something to occupy my mind. Easy enough, now I just need an idea.â Another entry: âIâm a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if itâs not even 10 p.m. and itâs a Tuesday night? What? The Kirkland facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.â Later: âYea, itâs on. Iâm not exactly sure how the farm animals are going to fit into this whole thing (you canât really ever be sure with farm animals . . .), but I like the idea of comparing two people together.â
FaceMash goes viral and inspires Zuckerberg to make something bigger. Meanwhile, two pedigreed rowers named Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss ask him to help with their own campus social network. He leads them on, while partnering with his best friend, Eduardo Saverin, to create a fast-growing competing product. Eventually, Sean Parker, the cofounder of Napster, swoops in whispering sweet nothings of VC funding in Zuckerbergâs ear. The two hatch a scheme to push Saverin out of the company. (Parkerâs affinity for women and parties, meanwhile, seals his fate.) Zuckerberg emerges alone atop the fastest growing social network in the world.
A year before the book came out, speculation about its sourcing was rampant. *Gawker* [leaked](http://web.archive.org/web/20080526202730/https://gawker.com/392575/tell+all-book-zuckerberg-set-up-facebook-to-get-laid) Mezrichâs initial proposal, noting that the story leaned heavily on Saverinâs account and that âmany facts seem off.â In particular, the blog questioned a bizarre scene in which one of the founders of Sun Microsystems invites Zuckerberg to eat koala on his yacht. When *The New York Times* later obtained an early galley, it [highlighted](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/a-new-book-on-facebook-some-of-it-fact-based/) other âpossible fabrications,â including a moment where Zuckerberg leaves a San Francisco party with a Victoriaâs Secret model. (At that point, Zuckerberg was already dating his now-wife, Chan.) When the *Times* reached out to the bookâs publisher, a publicist shrugged off concerns of veracity, saying: âThis is not reportage. It is big, juicy fun.â
Even with Gawker Mediaâ*s* steady drumbeat of criticism and the occasional privacy flare-up, Zuckerberg still enjoyed a relatively peaceful, even flattering relationship with the media. His interviews with [*Wired*](https://www.wired.com/2009/06/mark-zuckerberg-speaks/) and [*Techcrunch*](https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/24/startup-school-an-interview-with-mark-zuckerberg/) were never hostile, and mostly portrayed him as a young, awkward, and very, very smart entrepreneur. In the business press, he was [genuinely](https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-innovation-2009-10) [admired](https://venturebeat.com/2009/10/02/mark-zuckerberg-the-evolution-of-a-remarkable-ceo/) for building a company that was well on its way to an IPO at the tender age of 25. Shortly after the movie came out, his blank expression even appeared on the cover of *Time* magazineâs âPerson of the Yearâ issueâsomething that now seems unthinkable. â*The Social Network* is a rich, dramatic portrait of a furious, socially handicapped genius who spits corrosive monologues in a monotone to hide his inner pain,â the storyâs author, Lev Grossman, [wrote](https://web.archive.org/web/20110101031046/https://time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183,00.html). âThis character bears almost no resemblance to the actual Mark Zuckerberg. The reality is much more complicated.â
### The Movie
When *The Social Network* hit theaters in 2010, Facebook was the tech industryâs golden goose egg, and Zuckerberg its attentive countryman in menswear basics. It was the [most visited](https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/29/hitwise-facebook-overtakes-google-to-become-most-visited-website-in-2010/#:~:text=Hitwise%3A%20Facebook%20Overtakes%20Google%20To%20Become%20Most%20Visited%20Website%20In%202010,-Alexia%20Tsotsis%40alexia) website in the United States. Its hacker-friendly slogan âMove Fast and Break Things,â earned it a reputation in the Valley as a bold, forward-thinking innovator that wasnât afraid to take risks. And, thanks in part to the growth of the companyâs advertising operations, it would earn about \$2 billion in revenue that year.
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Most importantly, the public had come to see Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg as one and the same. When the website launched in 2004, the phrase âA Mark Zuckerberg Productionâ was stamped at the bottom of every single page. In subsequent years, the CEO was frequently [quoted](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register-for-new-facebook-website/) in *The* *Harvard Crimson* and other Ivy League newspapers discussing new features. At one point, he even [returned](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/11/1/zuckerberg-to-leave-harvard-indefinitely-mark/) to his alma mater to recruit people to work there. As his cabal of engineers rolled out new features from their raucous Palo Alto incubator, Mark led by example, tagging himself in photos and feverishly âlikingâ things. I was in the final class of students who received their college emails and joined Facebook, before it was opened up to the public, and seeing a tech CEO use social media at all felt intimate, novel. I recall thinking of Zuckerberg as a kind of millennial icon who was using his superior coding skills to enhance our social lives. A somewhat bland one, but an icon nonetheless.
Whatever goodwill Zuckerberg had earned by making a fun platform ran thinner as Facebook pushed to expand. In 2006, the company premiered âNews Feedââthe now-standard homepage that summarizes the profile changes, posts, birthdays, and upcoming events of everyone in a userâs social networkâand faced its first real privacy scandal. People complained the update made it too easy for other people to track their individual activities. A âStudents Against Facebook News Feedâ group was started, and gained over 100,000 members in a day. TV stations and protestors lined up on the street outside of the companyâs Palo Alto office. Zuckerberg responded to the fervor in a Facebook [post](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-app/calm-down-breathe-we-hear-you/2208197130/) titled âCalm Down. Breathe. We Hear You.â âStalking isnât cool, but being able to know whatâs going on in your friendsâ lives is,â he wrote with frat boy confidence, promising to add privacy tools.
But after the dust settled from that incident, little versions of the News Feed saga kept happening again and again and again. Journalists soon began to posit that Facebookâs cavalier privacy efforts were not a result of inexperience, but of its leaderâs stubborn indifference to criticism and disdain for users. In May of 2010, Nicholas Carlson unearthed an instant message exchange from Zuckerbergâs Harvard days in which the CEO offers an unnamed friend access to his fellow classmatesâ information. âI have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS,â he wrote. âWhat? Howâd you manage that one,â the anonymous recipient of these messages responded. âPeople just submitted it,â Zuckerberg [concluded](https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5). âI donât know why. They âtrust me.â Dumb fucks.â In a mostly flattering *New Yorker* [profile](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-facebook) that Facebook [timed](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-social-network-pr-28618) to come out ahead of *The Social Network*âs release, Zuckerberg said he regretted these messages, but they nonetheless seemed to confirm an increasingly frustrated publicâs suspicions that, no matter how many public pledges Zuckerberg made to protect user data, he was sitting in a giant mansion somewhere, snickering at all the chumps whoâd trusted him.
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The team entrusted with making *The Social Network* would only build off that impression. Once *Gawker* leaked Mezrichâs proposal, the film adaptation was set in motion. Aaron Sorkin, then famous for his loquacious political drama [*The West Wing*](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/aaron-sorkin-potential-rams-pats-sequel-kyries-leadership/id1043699613?i=1000427900880&mt=2), signed on to write the script, and David Fincher, whoâd earned a reputation for composing intellectual thrillers like [*Fight Club*](https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/3/26/18281406/fight-club-davis-fincher-making-of-brad-pitt-edward-norton) and [*Zodiac*](https://www.theringer.com/2017/7/25/16077982/zodiac-ten-year-anniversary-david-fincher-great-film-93d9cf2f70f6), would direct. Together, they cast a trio of hot 20-something actors: Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield as Saverin, and singer Justin Timberlake as Parker. Scott Rudin, one of the filmâs producers, attempted to secure Facebookâs cooperation, but the company considered any material sourced from *Accidental Billionaires* to be fiction. In the end, the team felt it had enough public records to stick with the Mezrich treatment anyway. Sorkin said he nevertheless took âextra careâ knowing his subjects were real people. âYou feel a special responsibility, knowing what a loud sound a Hollywood movie makes,â he later told [*The Hollywood Reporter*](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/anatomy-contender-social-network-56684).
Though Sorkinâs script contains no koala entrĂŠes, the moments in which he chose to exercise his creative liberties were some of the most memorable. Specifically when he imagines [a breakup](https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/9/21/21448572/social-network-opening-scene-david-fincher) between Zuckerberg and the woman who inspired FaceMash in the first few minutes of the movie. In the subsequent drunken code-a-thon that follows, Sorkin embellishes Zuckerbergâs LiveJournal rant by adding a few more cruel lines about the fictitious exâs last name and bra size. Tonally, his version wasnât *so* different from Zuckerbergâs original entries, or even your average Reddit post. Butâcombined with the made-up breakup and the fact that Chan was completely left out of the filmâSorkinâs additions made Zuckerberg seem extra callous. In the movieâs closing scene, after the Facebook creator has betrayed his collaborators and claimed his place atop the social totem pole, he returns to that same exâs Facebook profile, refreshing it over and over again to see whether she has accepted his friend request. As history would prove, it was just the right amount of real and fake to burrow deep into peopleâs brains as Facebook canon.
### The Reception
As emails from the 2014 Sony hack [showed](https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-tried-to-stop-the-social-network-from-being-made-2014-12), Zuckerberg had tried and failed to stop the film from being made. So ahead of its release, Facebookâs in-house PR agency, Outcast, [devised](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-social-network-pr-28618) a strategy to avoid slamming the film or attacking its creators. Instead, they would offer a counternarrative, in *The New Yorker* and, with help from cofounder Chris Hughes, in [*The New York Times*](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/business/media/21facebook.html). When [NPRâs Guy Raz asked about the film in 2010](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/128744904), Zuckerberg called it âfiction.â
Internally, Facebook tried to embrace the film. On opening weekend, it held an all-staff showing at Century Cinema 16 in Mountain View (which, coincidentally, was also where I saw *Independence Day*, *Jack*, and many other classics as a kid). âWe had some fun with it,â Mark Zuckerberg [said](https://www.facebook.com/qawithmark/videos/828790510512059/) during a Q\&A years later, after it became clear the movie would not go away. âI mean we knew that everyone who works at Facebook was going to want to see it anyway, because how often does someone make a major movie about your company?â Zuckerberg added that, for a while after the showing, Facebook employees would make fun of him by mixing appletinis in the officeâa reference to the scene in the movie where his character first meets Parker and consumes several of the cocktails.
But to viewers who didnât work at Facebook, *The Social Network* depicted a more sinister version of the 20-something to whom millions of users had entrusted their photos, birthdays, and interests. A version who trampled over his fellow studentsâ security in the name of a tasteless prank, who willingly pushed his friends and classmates out of the way to get what he wanted, and who was far less interested in Facebookâs stated mission of âconnecting peopleâ than he was in consolidating power. As *Times* reviewer Manohla Dargis [put it](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/movies/24nyffsocial.html):
> The price of that ambition, at least as dramatized here, is borne by those around Mark, who remains a strategic cipher throughout: a Facebook page without a profile photo. Charmless and awkward in groups larger than one, he rarely breaks into a smile and, if memory serves, never says thank you. He seems wary at some moments, coolly calculating at others: When his eyes havenât gone dead, you can see him working all the angles.
His tech-industry peers took less precaution to separate fact from fiction. âIt says something about the characters in a film, and in the valley, when the most likable characters are the lawyers,â one tech worker [tweeted](https://mashable.com/2010/09/29/the-social-network-panel/). Another chimed, âI donât know whether to hate Zuck or Parker or try to become them. Or both.â Tech journalist Jon Dube summarized the public sentiment most succinctly: âMade Zuck look pretty bad.â
The movie was an immediate hit, grossing \$224.9 million worldwide. It earned eight Academy Award nominations and three actual Oscars. The *Times* staff apparently covered it so much that it became the subject of a *Variety* [column](https://variety.com/2010/voices/opinion/ny-times-columnists-love-the-social-network-4127/). And it soon became a beloved, [oft-parodied](https://theweek.com/articles/490568/6-best-spoofs-social-network-trailer) fixture in popular culture. The same month the movie premiered, a *Forbes* poll [found](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1011/rich-list-10-technology-facebook-google-laws-zuckerberg-we-trust.html#7e8b99f221b6) that â63 percent of Americans didnât trust Facebook with their personal information.â
### The Corporate Makeover
Following the release of a major-motion picture that made its founder look like a socially inept hacker, the company needed to run damage control, especially given [the IPO](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703730704576066162770600234) on the horizon. Privately, Zuckerberg would spend the next few years ensuring he was protected from the public eye, [spending](https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/national-international/mark-zuckerberg-buys-neighbors-houses-for-30-million/1964902/) \$30 million on the four homes that surrounded his Palo Alto property, building a 6-foot lava rock wall around his 700-acre estate in Kauai, and hiring a [private security detail](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Mark-Zuckerberg-s-SF-security-detail-under-siege-11274376.php) to patrol the perimeters of his properties (and, [apparently](https://theoutline.com/post/3994/it-is-weirdly-hard-to-steal-mark-zuckerbergs-trash), protect his trash). But publicly, he embarked on a campaign to soften his image. The [day](https://www.fastcompany.com/1691042/mark-zuckerberg-announces-details-100-million-grant-newark-schools) the film premiered, he went on *Oprah* to announce he was giving a \$100 million grant to the Newark school system. A few months later, he [appeared](https://mashable.com/2011/01/29/zuckerberg-on-snl/) on *Saturday Night Live* where he and the host, Jesse Eisenberg, made awkward small talk. He [got](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/03/07/mark-zuckerberg-gets-a-dog-gives-it-a-facebook-page/#6b2d95f378c4) a Hungarian sheepdog named Beast and made it a Facebook page. He [reduced](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312513178090/d493645ddef14a.htm) his annual salary to \$1 a year.
Facebook later created [an entire team](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team-runs-mark-zuckerberg-s-facebook-page) to maintain Zuckerbergâs Facebook profile. Some of them deleted harassing comments on the threads he posted, others followed him around and took professional photos as he went for a run or hung out with his family. His annual New Yearâs resolutions evolved from simple stuff like âwear a tie everydayâ in 2009, to symbolic endeavors like âmeet a person from every U.S. stateâ in 2017. His staff even went so far as to [quietly delete](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/6/17203114/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-messages-deleted-messenger-inbox#:~:text=Facebook%20has%20admitted%20the%20company,founder%20and%20CEO%20Mark%20Zuckerberg.&text=Old%20Facebook%20messages%20sent%20by,Facebook's%20download%20your%20information%20tool.) all his old Facebook messenger conversations. Occasional telling tidbitsâlike Zuckerbergâs affinity for the game [*Risk*](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/will-mark-zuckerberg-be-our-next-president)âwould filter through the press, buttressing the myth of the domineering nerd, but outwardly he maintained the polished aura of a CEO, with more production value and much, much less personality.
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He also made a point to improve his public speaking. The old Mark Zuckerberg preferred to let his employees run meetings while occasionally yelling the word âDomination!â into the ether. But in late 2014, the new Zuck 2.0 would stream live âTown Hallsâ from his Facebook page, answering questions on a range of topics from employees and users. During the very first session at the companyâs Menlo Park headquarters, the mic was handed to a woman named Lori who had flown in from Povo, Utah, to repeat a question she had posted on one of the CEOâs threads. âIâm a huge movie fan, and one of my top-10 favorite movies is *The Social Network*, and my question has always been to you: How accurate is the story compared to the real-life story of Facebookâs beginnings?â
Zuckerberg laughed nervously. âWow, I havenât spent a lot of time thinking about that movie in a while,â he said, âI kinda blocked that one out.â He then went on to make several points. That, one, his life was far less interesting than the movie made it out to be: âThe reality is that writing a code and then building a product and then building a company actually is not a glamorous enough thing to make a movie about, so you can imagine that a lot of the stuff they probably had to embellish and make up. Because if they were really making a movie, it wouldâve been of me sitting at a computer and coding for two hours straight, which probably wouldâve just not been that good of a movie. And these guys, I think, want to win awards and sell tickets. So thatâs kind of where they went with it.â Two, that he had never met the people whoâd made the movie about his life, aside from his brief encounter with Eisenberg: âI think he was a little afraid to meet me, after his portrayal, but I tried to be nice.â Three, the premise of the movieâthat Zuckerberg was motivated to make Facebook so he could meet girlsâwas messed up. âThey just kind of made up a bunch of stuff that I found kind of hurtful.â And four, heâd begun dating Chan before he even started Facebook. (This is technically true. The two met in the bathroom line of the preemptive âgoing-away partyâ his Jewish frat threw him after heâd met with Harvardâs administrative board about the FaceMash incident.) In sum: âI think the real story is just, you know, a lot of hard work.â
### The Legacy
Zuckerbergâs motivations for maintaining an air-tight public persona have shifted over the years, away from his *Social Network* portrayal and toward a steady stream of scandals. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, and accusations of social media bubbles and Russian interference soared, Zuckerberg embarked on a public relations [tour](https://www.vox.com/2017/4/25/15421386/follow-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-year-journey-around-united-states) of roughly 30 states with a professional photographer in tow. He [pet](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103889279175151?pnref=story) a service dog in Montana, [drove](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103688679303901?pnref=story) a tractor in Wisconsin, and [watched](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10103423541247691&set=a.529237706231&type=3) a rodeo in Texas. Each stop warranted its own crisp Facebook post, and each update seemed more careful and apolitical than the previous. After heâd finally completed the project he gave a Q\&A about what heâd learned, concluding, blandly, that âthe biggest takeaway by far is that community, and especially local community, are much more important to people than we realize.â It appeared Zuckerbergâs aim was to demonstrate to users he didnât think of them as numbers, or chumps, but peopleâeven if the way Facebook operates indicated otherwise. But without any kind of political bent or spice to his messaging, the campaign felt weird, like after years hidden away behind a computer he was on a quest to learn about the human race for the very first time.
The more canned Zuckerberg has become, the more the public has turned to his silver screen depiction for answers.*The Social Network* is stamped into the companyâs DNA. As Steven Levy describes in the first chapter of *Facebook: The Inside Story*, Zuckerberg is asked about the movie in places as far flung as Nigeria. In 2018, *The New Yorker* [reported](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy) that Facebook executives still refer to *The Social Network* resentfully as âthe movie.â âFrom its facts to its essence to its portrayal, I think that was a very unfair picture,â Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in the same piece. âI still think it forms the basis of a lot of what people believe about Mark.â Ahead of one of the most consequential presidential elections in recent history, the public continues to take stock of Facebookâs negative effect on public discourse, news, and democracy. And in those terms, David Fincherâs masterpiece has felt all the more [relevant](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/business/media/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-movie-the-social-network.html); spiritually, if not factually, correct. More than anything, in a 10-year vacuum of personality, the better story won.
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