“You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be.”–Rashida Jones as a member of the legal team to Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg in David Fincher’s The Social Network.
Something about that final line in the film always struck me as a bit “off.” In any movie, there’s a subconscious desire to root for the protagonist, regardless of whether they are criminals or deviants. Think of Scarface, Joker, or the antihero movement on television started by James Gandolfini with The Sopranos. As we, the audience, follow the journey of the lead, we become invested in their outcome and, thereby, invested in them. There are reasons to root for Eisenberg’s version of the creator of Facebook. Early on, we see him as an underdog genius who goes from a tight Harvard dorm to a massively expansive office space in Silicon Valley over the course of the film. He’s slight of build, nerdy, overlooked, and an easy person to think of as being bullied.
At the same time, when watching the movie again for at least the tenth time, I did not find a single moment where Eisenberg’s version of Zuckerberg wasn’t being an “asshole.” And to be clear, I don’t mean “trying to be an asshole,” but being an asshole. The film begins with Zuckerberg belittling his girlfriend’s university (Boston U) by telling her she doesn’t need to do homework. Effectively saying, “You don’t go to a real school.” She (a terrific Rooney Mara) breaks up with him on the spot, a move that somehow befuddles Zuckerberg, whose pathetic effort at an apology only worsens matters.
To get back at her, he then writes a vindictive blog post about her that says while she has a “nice face,” she has small breasts–one of the more toxic tactics men have used throughout history to diminish the value of women and their appearance. From there, he hatches the idea of creating a site called Facemash that compares the hotness of female students on Harvard’s campus. He writes the code for the site with his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield, in what I still find to be his best performance) on Zuckerberg’s dorm room window. Several hours later, the tech team at Harvard takes the site down and admonishes Zuckerberg, but creating a wildly trafficked, if temporary, site gains him a significant level of on-campus notoriety.
Enter the “Winkelvi” twin brothers–played by Armie Hammer in a performance that is masterful from an acting standpoint and brilliantly enhanced by the film’s FX team. The Winkelvoss twins are descendants of Harvard royalty. They are strapping physical presences who row crew for Harvard and were good enough at it to compete in the Olympics. They offer Zuckerberg the backing to create a site called The Harvard Connection that would separate itself from sites like MySpace and Friendster by being exclusive to students and alumni of the prestigious university. Zuckerberg agrees almost immediately and then proceeds to steal the idea, expand upon it, and turn it into what would become Facebook. In doing so, he shuts the twins out completely. He does not return their calls or emails, does not answer his door, and runs from them on campus.
If you don’t come from the sort of privilege the Winkelvoss twins do, there’s something enjoyable about seeing two coddled, entitled young men who look like poster boys for the “Master Race” receive their comeuppance, even if what Zuckerberg does to them is ethically scurrilous. However, what Zuckerberg did to Saverin is unforgivable. As Saverin points out during a deposition (the film uses multiple ongoing lawsuits and the deposition as its framework), “I was your only friend.” The problem for Saverin is that he sees himself as an equal, but Zuckerberg sees him as a means to an end. Saverin is far too conventional a thinker for Zuckerberg to consider him as someone on his level of intelligence.
Zuckerberg does take quite a liking to Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake in easily his best performance on screen), the inventor of Napster. They both see themselves as disruptors of “the system” through technology. Timberlake’s Parker is a dazzler, who fawns over Zuckerberg’s idea while offering advice that Zuckerberg takes seriously because, in his mind, he and Parker are the same, except Zuckerberg is not cool like Parker. A quality Zuckerberg wants to attain by being in Parker’s presence, whereas Parker sees Zuckerberg as a business mark. Saverin sees through Parker’s flattery and charisma, offering up the immortal line (written by Aaron Sorkin) that Parker’s most significant contribution to “The Facebook” was eliminating “the ‘The,’” because “it’s cleaner.”
The Social Network is about more than the creation of Facebook. What it’s really about is the Model T Ford, the first guy to strike oil, to pan for gold, hell, the quest for fire even. It’s about the final frontier. Well, at least until the next final frontier comes along. In an era where space has been traveled, nearly all existing land has someone’s flag planted on it, and we have created enough nuclear bombs to destroy the world several times over, the internet is the most influential recent creation.
Of course, Zuckerberg didn’t create the internet or social networking. What he has done is master a variation of online connection that at one time was superior to all other forms–until Twitter, Instagram (which Zuckerberg ended up buying), and TikTok came along. We now live in an age where you can have hundreds, even thousands of friends whose faces you may never see (outside of their profile pic), voices you will never hear, and presence you will never touch. We do this mainly because of the invention of Facebook, because of Mark Zuckerberg.
The film asks and attempts to answer the question, “Who is Mark Zuckerberg?” If Fincher’s film is to be believed (Zuckerberg did not cooperate with the filmmaker), he is socially inept, nearly devoid of a sense of humor, blind to social cues, and insensitive to a fault. All he is is what he’s after. I may have just described 90% of all geniuses.
What’s fascinating is that a person with almost no social skills would create the most significant social network on the face of the Earth. How imperfectly perfect. We now live in a great big virtual world where intimacy between friends is no longer a given, or perhaps it is merely redefined. Because of social networking, the six degrees of Kevin Bacon game is now pointless. We’re all within six degrees (or less) from Kevin Bacon now.
This is the world we currently live in, and speaking from a personal level, it hasn’t been all bad. Because of Facebook, I have reconnected with pals from my past and struck up internet friendships with people of similar interests whose zip codes I may never breach, but some I have. I even met my wife through the platform.
While in many ways social media may be a more efficient and less expensive way to connect, it’s fair to wonder what this will do to our ability to communicate with others meaningfully going forward. Will many of us one day never have to leave our homes? Will all films be downloaded to your computer and acted out by seamlessly AI-animated characters? Will we ever need to walk into a bookstore ever again? Or open the doors of a school building? If not, can you imagine what it will be like going to a grocery store (at least until virtual food is created)? We’ll probably have to take anxiety medication before we choose a cart.
That is the film’s Model T Ford—the ongoing sea change in how we relate to one another. The Social Network pinpoints the moment our lives changed forever before we knew it. With such changes come unintended and even sinister consequences. Right now a handful of tech bros control powerful methods of communication, the dissemination of information (and more to the point, misinformation), with whatever guardrails they choose, or in the case of X (formerly known as Twitter) now owned by South African billionaire Elon Musk, there are no guardrails at all. The speed of technology, the income it creates for those at the top of tech mountain, and its impact on facts and the truth also comes with oversized access for those few that control the platforms and devices many of us rely on or are addicted to.
As we have seen recently, those who once opposed Donald Trump during his first term have suddenly “bent the knee” in such a manner that the current political scene is playing out like the most prolonged and worst episode of Game of Thrones ever. Zuckerberg himself banned Trump from Facebook and Instagram after the Insurrection on January 6, 2021. The statement released by Zuckerberg at the time read like so:
“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”
But something funny has happened along the way to 2025, now that Trump has regained the presidency. Zuckerberg restored Trump’s access to both platforms despite no change in the character of the current White House occupant’s posts. Zuckerberg also donated one million dollars to Trump’s inaugural fund through his Meta platform (an event where Zuckerberg could be seen chumming it up with Trump). To top it off, Zuckerberg recently settled a lawsuit Trump filed against Meta in response to his 2021 suspension from Facebook and Instagram for twenty-five million dollars. Granted, to Zuckerberg, whose net worth has been estimated at two hundred and thirty-two billion dollars, twenty-five million is like tossing a quarter at a waitress in 1965.
At the time of the release of The Social Network, I found Eisenberg’s performance to be riveting but a little harsh. The public persona of Zuckerberg seemed so benign as to be completely unthreatening. I now realize that Eisenberg wasn’t playing the public persona of Zuckerberg, which didn’t exist during the timeframe the film covers. He’s playing his id—a technosociopath who boasts of his misdeeds during a deposition. “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook,” he says to the Winkelvoss twins. While not an untrue statement, there is a reason why the twins walked away with a sixty-five million dollar settlement: They had a case based on intellectual property.
What has been revealed by another viewing of the film in conjunction with current events is that Zuckerberg’s id is all. His loyalty extends no further than one’s usefulness to him. He is slighted with ease. He is only impressed by those who are impressed with him. His relationships are transactional, and he worships at the altar of self. You may have noticed there’s a lot of that going around right now.
For all of the many aspects of Zuckerberg that The Social Network revealed, its conclusion was flawed.
“You really are an asshole, Mark.”
That’s the correct final line.
