I find myself thinking about "The Social Network" quite a bit. I think it is maybe the definitive movie of our time for several reasons, it's energy, it's language, the diagnosis of a very acute toxicity in white male fragility, as the impetus for an entire network that became fundamental in the way an entire society communicates. I think mostly though about the underlining theme of exclusivity, and our obsession with elitism. Members of small collectives, that choose to crate signifiers that separate them aesthetically from the rest of their cohorts on this journey of existence. Within the film, there are Final clubs, and fraternities, legacies, teams, and of course the institution from wherein this all takes place Harvard University ( an Ivy League) . When Mark Zuckerberg himself alienated by the incompatibility of his glaring misanthropy with the social nature of these exclusive clubs - he does so without interrogating the value of exclusivity. Exclusivity is a favored tool of capitalism. A driver of ambitions, and greed, and an instigator for the rampant abuse of otherness as a consequence. It drives our interactions arguably towards the worst in and of us. This is represented in social media by a number of questionable attitudes, and behaviors, including encouragement to drive up the differential between our followers, and our follow count, thus announcing our prestige, unproductive forms of argumentation and conflict resolution that resemble the board room scene in the film, and yes misanthropy. Whether these conditions pre existed the advent of social media is unimportant to me, as what remains clear is that social media fosters them, (Just take a look at twitters questionable record for suspending accounts). Exclusivity, celebrity, sex, are the conditions through which we are funneled to our stations by selection of algorithms that follow closely the prototype co-created by Zuckerberg. Watching the social network, and being engulfed in the cultural omnipresence of social media, it is hard for one to ignore the metta-ness of it all. Not only from an aspect of watching the birth of something you now use prolifically, but through seeing how much of one of social media’s founding father’s values ended up as the dominant value system of social media. To what extent the film is an honest portrayal of what happened Im not sure, but watching Zuckerberg in interviews I’m sure the portrayal of Zuckerberg as anti-social is true. And that is the part I find most fascinating, disturbing, and ironic. An anti-social, young white male created the baseline for social behavior in the new millennium, and that never ceases to be unsettling to me.
