It will be a huge coup for IT nerds the world over when The Social Network – the David Fincher-directed film about the founding of Facebook is released later this year, portraying baby-faced co-founder the obscenely rich Mark Zuckerberg as a sex maniac. The message? As long as you’re rich as sin, a tech geek can still have the sexual fantasy world as your oyster.
The movie stars Jesse Eisenberg (the lovable geek from fiercely underrated Zombieland) as Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, one of Facebook’s founders and co-founder of Napster, and is based on the Ben Mezrich’s novel The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook. The book reveals that the motivation behind creating the social network was the same thing that motivates most behaviour we see in American college movies: getting laid.
In the book Mezrich writes: “Even at Harvard, the most exclusive school in the world, it was all really about sex. Getting it, or not getting it.” Basically, Zuckerberg is portrayed as an evil genius – who allegedly ate koala meat once, which is pretty much the most evil thing a person can do.
Lately Zuckerberg’s machiavellian business ethics have come to light after a 2003 instant message transcript surfaced, revealing his cavalier attitude towards the privacy of Facebook users. The Business Insider published the following exchange between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after he launched The Facebook in his dorm room:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
Ouch.
Zuckerberg’s stance on privacy has appeared to be more reactionary than anything – often modifying the site according to user feedback and taking the it’s easier to apologise than ask permission approach, which has led to heavy scrutiny.
With all the privacy scandals, geek sex, college campus shenanigans and koala eating, it sounds like Revenge of The Nerds meets Animal House – and everything about that is ten types of right.
The Social Network is opening in cinemas this October.
Via ninemsn
