The Social Network was better than I anticipated it to be. There are some instances in the movie when Jesse Eisenberg (Mark Zuckerberg) is using “techie” speech and I have no idea what he’s talking about, but the way he plays this sarcastic, genius is hilarious. The way Jesse carries this character through the movie is effortless. He makes you believe that Mark maybe really that much off an ass.
Justin Timberlake, who plays the creator of Napster, was a surprisingly good actor (there is actually Oscar buzz going around). He played a young hot-shot that has some paranoid tendencies, but yet, he makes you want to party with him at his outrageous, coke-infested raves.
Overall, the whole story is a good one. The idea that Mark’s wrath from his girlfriend breaking up with him sparking the whole chain of events is cliché on paper, but once enacted makes for a great build-up for what the controversy over this website is all about.
Like I said, I had no idea how Facebook came about, or that there was even controversy over it, or should I say two controversies? One being with Mark’s best friend, Eduardo, and the other with the Olympic rowing twins, Tyler and Cameron Winklevosse. The Winklevosses claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea because they wanted to create a social site just for Harvard students. Eduardo, on the other hand, was cheated out of the potential billions that were going to be made, after shelling out his own cash to get Facebook up and running. Both parties settled and now Facebook is worth upwards of $33 billion.
What Mark Zuckerberg did changed the world. He did this, well simply because he is a computer whiz and he could, but, mainly he did, because he just wanted to be accepted. I can’t imagine what kind of a person he is in real life, arrogant or shy, but seeing this movie opened my eyes to a new world…and also reminded me that if you’re a totally tool-bag with an IQ off the charts, with the right amount of luck, you will become a billionaire. Guess I need to go to Harvard to find me one, huh?
Millions of Friends, but Not Very Popular
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Millions of Friends, but Not Very Popular
Arianna; The key to this, I found, was not only in the exclusivity of Facebook (as we've mentioned in class and Zuckerberg himself mentions in the movie), but the fact that he successfully translated one component of our social lives, friendship and popularity, to a virtual plane. Is there anything else to our social existence that could potentially translate to the web? And, if this is a guideline by which trending websites operate, what part of our social lives to Twitter and MySpace represent?
ReplyDeleteHonestly, those are good questions, and some that I might really have to dig down and think about, because I've never considered these things before. I just thought that these were trends that people followed. I never stopped to consider what an impact it has had on our lives. It just seems to me that Facebook is for everybody, and not just celebrities or musicans, that's why it's so popular.
ReplyDeleteI guess you could say it almost makes an everyday person into a celebrity... depending on their social standing, that is.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is almost a necessity to our generation's social life, and I agree that it has become so popular because it's intriguing to the average person. It is even more appealing because, like Brian said, it can make an average person into a celebrity. I'm not talking about celebrity in the sense of someone being discovered by modeling agencies because of their pictures or anything like that, but rather becoming a celebrity among other average people. There are friends of mine who have two thousand "friends" on the site, and it can literally make them famous among the Facebook world itself. I guess that's what can be so intoxicating about it, of course aside from the fact that you can get the latest gossip in a never-ending newsfeed. Oh, and I still want to see the movie!
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