Warning: spoiler alert!
Social networking has become the culture. It’s the norm. It’s how friends communicate how business gets done, and how we connect to the world. David Fincher’s The Social Network tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg and how he created Facebook and destroyed friendships with greed, corruption, and jealousy.
Ideas can not be stolen, legally speaking. Of course in the moral side of things ideas can be taken, enhanced, and made into multi-billion dollar corporations that change the way the world socializes. Which, in short, is exactly what Zuckerberg did by taking the idea of “The Harvard Connection” from twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played brilliantly by Armie Hammer). He enlists his best (and only) friend, Eduardo Saverin, as CFO to provide the financial backing to start the site. Along the way he meets up with Sean Parker (the guy behind Napster) who cynically kicks Eduardo out of the company and writes himself in.
The story of the development of the website is crosscut with the depositions of the cases (yes, there are two) that the twins and Eduardo take against Zuckerberg. Fincher’s dark and subtle mood helps keep the tension of the story alive amongst the amazingly witty and fast-past dialogued penned by Aaron Sorkin.
But the reason this film is great is not the mood or the great dialogue. No, it’s the amazing characterization of those involved in the story, and how it teaches us so much about ourselves. Over 500 million people have signed up for Facebook. There is a generation of kids out there that will grow up on social networks and know nothing else. Facebook and the other social networks have become the way we mingle; it has changed the world as we know it. The irony of it all is that it was created by a guy that in all accounts is socially retarded. So much so that we leave him in the final shot, sitting alone in a conference room, refreshing a Facebook page over and over again, waiting for a friend to “accept” him in cyberspace because they could not connect in reality. That haunting image of the man that connected us all by severing all his connections is the amazingly ironic last shot of the film, juxtaposed with seemingly satisfying subtitles and “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” by Paul McCartney.
This image of the youngest billionaire in the world sitting alone, refreshing his screen over and over and over again stuck with me and made me think about the way we socialize online. We see ourselves becoming that zombie in front of the computer, unable to deal with humans, afraid of speaking and listening out loud and face-to-face, or looking into the eyes of our friends while they speak to us, or listening because we want to, and being able to look and feel and touch each other and know that there is a human behind that voice, that smile, and that friend. The disappearance of the organic relationships and the rise of the artificial connections between us due to technology is a major theme of the film, and one that reflects the great novel Fahrenheit 451.
Social networking is very much a part of the world, but the question is: will you become all consumed?
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