“I’m in this to build something cool, not to get bought,” Mark Zuckerberg told CNN about social network start Facebook in 2005.
Five years later, David Fincher, Aaron Sorkin, a one-man twin, and very hot Eduardo Saverin did more for Zuckerberg’s cool factor than 500 million users on a popular Website currently on its 6th life. Sex at a billiard spot! House parties! Two girls making out at a Harvard Final Club party! Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll makes everything better, except when it adds nothing of value to the story. I know the movie is not a documentary but a mockumentary done poorly is still a mockumentary done poorly.
 
My generation has LIVED the history of Facebook. We’re not friends with Mark Zuckerberg, but we  are the influencers that FB used, much like the twins, to make the Website hot property. So, of course, people like me want to see the movie and of course the hype machine made it a must. Facebook is not the first place we pimped and shilled for without generating a dollar of returns, which is why the social network amnesia is troubling.

A year before Zuckerberg was in trouble for FACESMASH, a kid at nearby M.I.T. created Hot or Not for the student population. On the day he took it down, for the four hour period, 15,000 pictures were loaded. In the unclear FB movie, Zuckerberg randomly gets an idea to do pretty much the exact same thing, and gets 22,000 hits. Now you would assume based on the promo and the views that 22,000 random people from Harvard and beyond clicked on this Facemash but no Sherlocks you are wrong. Less than 500 people actually clicked on the friggin’ Website that got 22K hits, according to the Crimson in 2003.
But, let’s not dwell. Let’s talk about the title  “The Social Network,”which I guess was awarded that bland name because no one really wanted to be committed to telling the truth or doing any research. Using SN, you can force viewers to connect this generic Hollywood formula to the rise of any popular Web destination. This means the response to criticism about accuracy will always be: It’s fictionalized version of the truth.

We can forget that Mi Gente and Blackplanet begat Friendster which begat Myspace which begat Facebook. Facebook is the Deity of this movie.  And, that just makes my head want to explode. How, oh, how did Mark Zuckberg think of such a thing. Please Aaron Sorkin write a screen play and inform us how this would be done. Would Zuckberg one day just say a place to keep bios and pictures would be great? Is THAT how it would happen?
 
Then, in an effort to be creative, improve on his idea by deciding a key ingredient to Facebook would be relationship statuses? You want me to believe that Facebook was the FIRST place to ask single or married? Has anyone been on the internet more than friggin’ five years? The history of hooks up on the Web predates Facebook. But, ok. Should we also give Zuckerberg credit for the idea of adding a birthday to your profile?
 
The dialogue written in this film leads me to believe people creating a social network have no knowledge of social networks. There’s no real mention of tough competitors during its early days, like, Myspace and Friendster. No, for some reason Mark Zuckerberg would only mention those two companies when talking to hot twin 1 and  hot twin 2 about how their “idea” differs from the two companies. The two companies that were pretty popular when Facebook, which apparently takes it’s name from a Harvard intranet system, was taking off. As a matter of fact, no one would mention how Facebook is eerily similar to its competitors during mediation?!
The two dotcoms did not play a losing hand because of FB but because of spam, bands, loading time and privacy concerns. Any movie about social networks should feature a mention about this. You absolutely cannot do a Yahoo movie without mentioning Google and vice versa. The brilliant idea that Zuckerberg and Winkliis had did not differ from two highly populated Websites but we won’t address because rational conversations about creating a social media Website apparently does not take place.
 
I also won’t harp on how a dude that could program code could not figure out the email addresses of men that are part of the Phoenix club. No, he needs a friend because email for a University doesn’t really have a standard format. You can’t use a little part of your brain to figure that an email address if you friggin’ KNOW their names? (We’ll ignore search directories option.)

There’s so many glaring problems, I can’t be bothered with being coherent and allowing this to flow. When in passing someone in the movie references watching the Winklevoss  rowing loss  on Facebook, I wanted to roundhouse someone. Unless I missed an important part of FB capabilities, when exactly were we watching streaming videos on the Facebook platform? The gratutious rowing scene, which gave the director the ability to capture something beautiful needed to somehow be relevant, I guess.

When I began feeling exasperated my boyfriend —who loved the film— thought I fell asleep. But, nope, I was just annoyed by everything on the screen. I wish I fell asleep. I wish I missed Sorkin’s attempt to fulfill Zuckerberg’s dream using this condescending piece of work. If you think this is anti-Zuckerberg film, you got a case of the grumps. This is a love song meant to be backed by youtube and liveblogged by Twitter.

How can Zuckerberg be considered a villain IF nothing he OR the TWINS came up with was original? If there’s nothing to steal, how exactly is he a bad guy? What the hell was this movie about? Why did I pay $12 to see it?! Why do my morals keep me from watching a bunch of films on the internets for free?! Why are people pretending Justin Timberlake did a great job? I apologize for the lack of sense in this blog but I bored myself writing about this movie.