More On Mark Zuckerberg
My previous post has one comment. It almost had two, but my response to the first comment became long enough to become this post.
It is hard to be judged at such a young age- before you have gained real life experience. OTOH, he has enough money that this won't prevent him from living his life the way that he wants to.
I agree with your first hand.
I sometimes wish I would somehow have enough money to not worry about certain necessities, conveniences and comforts. It would be nice to not be quite so concerned (with good reason) about the tooth implant not being covered by insurance, to be able to go to Israel more often with less thought about the price and/or to set up house there, to feel comfortable pursuing my dream of writing and performing more regularly though the income could be unsteady and meager.
And yet I don't see how these things that money can buy would assure overall that I live my life the way I want to. My patterns of thoughts, reactions and actions wouldn't be changed by money - unless I used that money to get help working on those areas.
I've been thinking a lot about Mark. I've taught students with his kind of affect. They seem kind of oblivious to the fact that they don't socially interact the way the others do, unscathed by their lack of friends. And yet, I smell pain there. I don't know if loneliness is subjective or objective. From where I stand Mark and the people I've seen who are emotionally cut off and askew seem sad. It looks like like they can't presently live their lives the way they want to.
I've been thinking a a lot about Mark. Several people told me that they walked out of the movie jealous of him, asking themselves, "What have I created? They said they felt inspired to invent something. I don't get that. I couldn't laugh at any of his sarcastic comments. I wasn't excited for him, at 26, having changed the world. I felt sad for him having life ahead of him, and as of now having to live it surrounded by a bubble.
I've been thinking about Mark and the contribution he's made to the world in Facebook. Like blogging and other uses of the computer, Facebook enables communication without connection. There's plenty of room for anonymity, anger, and fantasy. People who have no friends have 5,000 "friends." What Mark has given the world is a taste of his world. Rather than developing socially and emotionally and intellectually (in fields other than computer science) himself, at 26 he's put all that aside. Why has he put it aside? To make money. Also, to teach us how to get even better at assuaging our own loneliness through a superficial distraction that involves other humans, sort of, but not really. Sigh.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 7:01 AM
6 Comments:
From what I've read it seems that most of the movie is fiction, based only very, very loosely on facts. The writers basically wrote whatever they wanted and pretended it was Zuckerberg's life.
I have no use for facebook, myspace or any of their clones. Zuckerberg has not changed the world for me, not even one iota.
They used the depositions and court notes from the two cases against him and they did research. But they also Hollywood-ized it.
You're a hold-out. For most people I know Facebook is like email was at the start. People - even those who aren't into it and don't use it much - have gotten Facebook accounts. Anyone reading can confirm or deny.
I'm not even a holdout. It just doesn't interest me. I opened an account once - I can't remember if it was on facebook or myspace - and found it utterly pointless.
Here's an article that discusses the movie's fictionalization of Zuckerberg's life:
http://www.slate.com/id/2269250/pagenum/all/#p2
thanks.
From Entertainment Weekly 10/8/10.
"Asked about the movie's overall truthfulness, Rudin offers a carefully worded reply: 'You can't make untrue statements about someone without running the risk of getting sued," he says. "Look around and notice nobody has sued us.'"
Aaron Sorkin says, "If we know what kind of a beer Mark was drinking on a Tuesday night in Octoberseven years ago when there were only three other people in the room, it should tell yousomething about how close our research sources were to the subject and to the events."
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