Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

The real Mark Zuckerberg on what The Social Network got wrong:
...It's such a big disconnect [...] the way that people make movies think about what we do in Silicon Valley - building stuff - [...] they just can't wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things. I think this is true: I think ambitious nerds are ambitious nerds because they are nerdy and ambitious, not because they got dumped. We all like a love story, but some stories aren't love stories. Like Lord of the Rings. That ain't a love story. And I found it annoying when a love story was shoe-horned in there.

Apparently, the founding of Facebook wasn't a love story either: Zuckerberg has had the same girlfriend since before Facebook's founding. But I actually liked the (failed) love story in The Social Network. I thought it worked. I thought it provided a nice contrast to the Sean Parker character, who no longer thought about the crush that (fictionally) inspired him to start Napster. So although in general I don't approve of contaminating cool, nerdy things with romance, in the case of The Social Network I'll make an exception, because it was such a fun movie.

Listening to the real Mark Zuckerberg, he seems much more normal and likable than the character in the movie. But I actually liked the fact that the character in the movie wasn't likable. I loved the dysfunction in the main characters, and seeing the lawyers, older and/or more socially skilled, wearily trying to sort through their adolescent spat (in which billions of dollars are at stake).