One of the other mums I went with admitted (at school pick-up) to have spent considerable time today Googling Mark Zuckerberg. We all agreed that Justin Timberlake was a revelation (who knew that Sean Parker was such a fakeozoid? And so pasty?). Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Zuckerberg, was so good he made my skin crawl and my mind explode at the same time. I don't know what Zuckerberg is like in real life, but I suspect we would not be friends. Not even on Facebook.
I admit that, much as when watching The Wire, it took me a while to get my 'ear in', so to speak. The opening scene - which Margaret and David have labelled an 'instant classic' - initially felt like it was being acted out in code. They talked fast, they talked quietly, they spoke in apparent non-sequiturs, and the bar was loud. It's worth hanging in for Aaron Sorkin's writing, though.
It also took me a while to get my eye in once the Winkelvoss twins (both played by Armie Hammer) appeared. At first, the thought that there could possibly be two such ridiculously good-looking men in the world scattered my thought processes. Once I worked out there was probably just one, I spent a lot of time trying to work out how 'it' was done, and trying to count the shots where they were on screen together. I know. I need to get out more.
As a person who has spent a lot of time on social networks this year - more time than ever before, thanks to this blog - one moment stayed with me. As Zuckerberg wrote his drunken blog post, calling his ex-girlfriend a bitch and comparing her to a farm animal, my friend K, sitting next to me, leaned across and whispered: "Do you think it will be this bad when our kids are older, or do you think it will get better?"
"Worse," I whispered back, fiercely. "Much worse."
I thought about what that ex-girlfriend's mum thought when she saw that blog post (I'm assuming she did). I thought about the wide, broad and many avenues for misadventure on the internet that await the unwary, the unknowing and the plain unlucky. Facebook may connect the world in a big, cool hug, but it also lays open lives.
Mark Zuckerberg is often quoted as saying 'the Age of Privacy is dead'. He said, in an interview with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington (January 2010), that Facebook's raft of security changes (which essentially made every user's information public unless they chose to follow a long list of instructions on how to make it private) were in response to what the company perceived as 'changing social norms'. In other words, we're all so comfortable sharing our lives online that we're happy to leave privacy behind for an open, public future.
I'm wondering if he feels the same now that an unauthorised, dramatised version of his own life has been played out on screen?
Don't you love a movie that makes you think?
Just to be social, I'm flogging my blog with Lori at RRSAHM this fine Friday. Pop over and join in!
