David Fincher’s American biographical drama film, The Social Network, portrayed the founding of the social networking website Facebook. However, in a recent conversation on Colin and Samir’s podcast, Mark Zuckerberg criticised the film’s plot, calling it a “weird experience” to watch.
Mark Zuckerberg trashes The Social Network plot
Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he took his entire company to watch the film, and when asked about his experience seeing it, he said, “It was weird, man. They got all these very specific details of what I was wearing, or these specific things correct, but then the whole narrative arc around my motivations and all this stuff was completely wrong.”
Further dismissing the film’s plot, he said, “The whole arc is like, I’m somehow motivated by trying to find a girlfriend, [but] I was dating Priscilla before I started Facebook. And then you have this whole stuff about—it’s an unfortunate part of the internet—how people make up a lot of the founding mythology to fit what they want. It is true that I made a bunch of other websites and stuff when I was at Harvard, but people cast it as if FaceMash, that prank thing that I made, was the precursor to Facebook, I guess maybe because it has ‘face’ in the name. It was completely separate from Facebook.”
Zuckerberg further stated that, even after 21 years, misconceptions about FaceSmash prevail largely due to the film. He noted that many people believe he created the platform as a service to rate individuals’ attractiveness, which he dismissed as inaccurate. According to him, he was simply a kid experimenting with various projects at the time.
About The Social Network
The 2010 drama is based on the 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. It stars Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, with Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker, Armie Hammer as Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Max Minghella as Divya Narendra. The film is available to watch on Netflix.
