"The Social Network" Doesn't Get Social Networking

Photo Credit: Alessio85

Everything that's wrong about The Social Network is summed up by its title.

The movie, opening nationwide today, is not interested in the concept of social networking or the actual usage of Facebook. Aaron Sorkin, the film's writer, told me in my profile of Mark Zuckerberg for the New Yorker: "I've heard of Facebook, in the same way I've heard of a carburetor. But if I opened the hood of my car I wouldn't know how to find it." It's a movie full of fictionalized scenes and Sorkin's trademark rat-a-tat dialogue that -- save for one eerie, almost ripped-from-the-headlines exchange (more on that later) -- say little about our online lives beyond the perfunctory "Facebook-is-addicting" and "we're-sharing-too-much-information."

And it's a movie that, at its core, stands on one glaring false premise: Zuckerberg as a flat-eyed, borderline autistic, humorless guy, a consummate outsider who wanted badly to get into one of Harvard's "final" clubs, his considerable coding skills reduced to social awkwardness. In other words, the geek as the "other." The lonely nerd, sitting alone in front of his computer, seeking connection. The friendless Zuckerberg creating Facebook to make friends and get a girl. There's something that feels quite dated and very 1990s about all of this, like the filmmakers never bothered to meet some of the geeksters -- geeks and hipsters -- at Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc. who fuel the social media renaissance in Silicon Valley. Zuckerberg is presented as an alien from a faraway computer programming space, instead of a leading member of an entrepreneurial generation who's grown up with the Internet and now tops Vanity Fair's ranking of the New Establishment, ahead of Steve Jobs, the Google guys and Rupert Murdoch. In the film, Zuckerberg's character lacks context. He just is.

Zuckerberg, mind you, is no saint. A string of instant messages he sent while he was in college has been embarrassing and damaging to his reputation. On the whole, his views on privacy and his goal of making the world "a more open place" push way too many buttons to count. But Hollywood's stereotypical portrait of the introverted uber-geek has already gotten some in the tech community -- even those critical of Zuckerberg -- all riled up.

Anil Dash, the blogging pioneer and frequent critic of the Facebook CEO, told me: "The movie is written in the abstract, based on what they feel Facebook, and the social Web, represent. It's exoticism. It's the 1940s, when you had a white actor in yellow-face play a Chinese character, you know? Those foreigners talk like this, and it's why they're inscrutable and evil."

Added Jeff Jarvis, a long-time chronicler of new media and author of What Would Google Do?: "This is all about snobbery, about dismissing all this Internet stuff. The filmmakers didn't give any value to what Zuckerberg made. How can they say that they understand him if they don't understand his creation? It's dismissive of the 500 million or so people who are on Facebook. It's intellectually lazy. It's insulting."

Neither Sorkin nor Ben Mezrich (whose unauthorized book The Accidental Billionaires inspired the film) had access to Zuckerberg. And as one of the few journalists who's interviewed Zuckerberg numerous times and is familiar with the history of Facebook's early founding and continued growth, seeing the movie is a jarring, disorienting experience. How much reality can one expect from Hollywood? Not much, of course. For one, Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Zuckerberg is far from the actual Zuckerberg. At any point during the two-hour movie, I can't recall seeing Eisenberg's Zuckerberg crack a big smile or display any outward emotion. Eisenberg's Zuckerberg is on autopilot. He's not evil, per se, but driven -- driven towards what, we're not sure. The filmmakers have absolutely no idea. The real Zuckerberg, on the other hand, has a much more varied personality. Though naturally shy and inherently a private person, he's a noted prankster among his family and friends and, at any given moment, can easily turn serious or comical. Insecure is not a word anyone would use to describe him. Friendless, he is not. He is driven towards creating and dominating a new kind of Internet based on our identities and relationships.