random TSN ramblings (with a touch of Merlin)

[silviakundera]

lawyerdown said a while ago that I should feel free to blather about my view of TSN from a business perspective... so, blah, I felt like rambling. thus, I shall do so.

"They brought vampire Mark Zuckerberg! Watch out, he might dilute your stock!"- Rifftrax's Twilight: Eclipse audio commentary

Comments

[kiezh]

It seems to me that Mark is the type of guy - and I've known a few of this type - who is deeply invested thinking of himself as the smartest, most rational, most in-control person in the room, while remaining completely unaware that his emotions and his issues are written above his head in letters of fire. "It wasn't personal" and "I made the right choices for Facebook" are totally the stories he'd tell himself, the way he'd try to frame events, so he doesn't have to admit that he's often motivated by wounded pride and fits of temper and, y'know, is basically a human being who fucks up.

So I think it's believable and in character (although not at all sympathetic) for Mark to be full of excuses and self-justifications. What I don't get is why anyone, in-universe or in fandom, would believe his bullshit. For all the reasons you state, and also just the way Mark comes off in the movie - he is a person who is motivated by strong emotions, whose anger and pride and fear (and, to give him some credit, his desire to create) drive everything he does. This is not a guy who makes carefully thought out, rational decisions. This is a guy who was an asshole while drunk and angry and stupid and blogging, and then refused to ever apologize for it.

So... basically I agree with you entirely. To really sell me on Mark as a character and Mark/Eduardo together, post-dilution, an author has to show some serious growth on his part. I'm willing to believe that people can grow up and regret past assholery, but unless I see Mark doing that, I have a hard time shipping him with anyone at all.

(I see him in the depositions as still in defensive-excuses mode, btw. Maaaybe there's a worm of poisonous doubt deep in his soul, every time he looks at Eduardo's Sad Eyes of Woe. Maybe it keeps him up at night, wondering if he's been wrong the whole time. I would like to think so. But I don't think he's ready to admit it.)