Here’s Mark Zuckerberg’s Review of ‘The Social Network’ Before Congress
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress this week. He is talking about very important issues vital to the future of our nation: Internet privacy, data collection, cybersecurity, and how nefarious forces could potentially use social media to alter elections and subvert our democracy.
He also, basically unprompted, gave his review of The Social Network, David Fincher’s movie about him and the origin of Facebook. Spoiler alert: Zuckerberg doesn’t like it! And this was under oath, too, so you know he wasn’t lying.
It all went down when Congressman Billy Long from Missouri asked Zuckerberg a question about FaceMash, the website Zuckerberg created before Facebook, while he was still a student at Harvard University. That site took pictures of college students and put them side-by-side, and let the user pick which one was hotter. In The Social Network, we see Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) begin this website, which eventually morphs into what Facebook became.
But the real Zuckerberg takes issue with that chronology, and the movie itself, which he called an “unclear truth” in response to Congressman Long’s question:
Zuckerberg said some surprising things in front of Congress this week; his Social Network review was not one of them. Of course he hated it. Would you like a movie that makes you look like the biggest goober on the planet, that shows how you (allegedly) muscled your best friend out of a business dedicated to building friendships, and that ends suggesting that you did it all because you were upset that this one girl rejected you? No, you would not. And neither does he!
But what does Zuckerberg think of Se7en? That I’m still waiting to find out. Maybe when he testifies the next time we’ll get that review.