The Social Network: a few thoughts
Even though I only sporadically update my LJ these days (in fact, I have 4 other blogs that I've set up and currently neglect), I figured it apropos that I use my LJ blog to write about the Social Network, considering it is the site of the fictional Mark Zuckerberg venting about his breakup with his fictional BU girlfriend and, as depicted by David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, the impetus for the creation of an online empire, whose long term ramifications on privacy, communication and society at large, have yet to be determined. As my friends leveled at the movie upon exiting the theater, if there is one major complaint to be leveled against Fincher's very very well made film it is its seemingly one dimensional portrayal of a megalomaniacal Zuckerberg, who appears to discard friends without emotion on his quest for...well, what is it that exactly drives the filmic Zuckerberg? His reasons for siding against various factions and individuals in the film are borne out of his envy for the cool and popular kids.
Early on in the film, his soon to be ex-girlfriend played by Mara Rooney says, "You're going to be successful and rich. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a tech geek. I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole." The back and forth miscommunication between Rooney and Jesse Eisenberg sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Zuckerberg is depicted not unlike Amadeus (the eponymous Milos Forman film), a child-like genius that conjures up the computer code for Facebook as if out of thin air and while on an angry drunken binge. This early scene also is revealing of what Sorkin must believe are the dangers of social networking: a callous indifference to others in the act of airing one's entire life on an online forum. One image that's stuck with me a day after seeing the film is Mara Rooney reacting with hurtful eyes to news of Zuckerberg's blog post deriding her bra size as less than ideal. The scene is not only wrenching in its depiction of how quickly the internet disseminates slander, but also because it so powerfully intersects with the recent and tragic suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clemente, who felt it necessary to end his life upon learning of his friends filming and broadcasting his sexual relations with another man. There will be those that decry Clemente's death of further evidence of the internet's erosion of human decency. I think it's safe to say humans were doing awful things to each other long before the internet came along, but it does beg the question: has the internet desensitized us in our interactions with other people?
Reading any political message board or forum is a quick lesson in how unrestrained people can be towards one another behind what they believe to be a veil of anonymity. What Zuckerberg writes on his blog out of frustration is not without empathy: we've all been there at one point or another. Perhaps without the internet, those words would have been for Zuckerberg's eyes only. I'm reimagining that pivotal scene in Ian McEwan's Atonement, with Robbie writing a lewd blog post instead of a mistakenly sent letter. It's entirely possible (and perhaps likely) that the students that precipitated Clemente's suicide were not bigots, but instead immoral and ignorant of the ramifications of what they thought to be some sort of sick practical joke. Incidents like these, while often less severe, are not isolated and it is the job of educators and parents to teach our children tolerance and empathy. We must imbue in them an awareness that their online actions carry very real world consequences.
I'll try to post a more thorough entry on the film later this week.