The Social Network.

Tonight, I watched The Social Network for the first time. Perhaps a bit sad given the hype around it and how long it's been out for, but that's the case. It was on TV. So I thought I'd watch it.

If you're not familiar with what the movie is about, it's about a guy called Mark Zuckerberg. Hang on, you're thinking. Isn't it supposed to be about Facebook? Perhaps. But it's not. It's about Zuckerberg. It's about him during the time that he made and grew and fought over Facebook, yes. But it's certainly about him. I'll expand a little on that; but first, I'll do a brief overview of the movie.

It starts with Mark getting dumped by his girlfriend. He then gets drunk and depressed, and, following a random comment from a roommate at uni about the photos of the people in the dorm, makes a site in the space of a few hours on which every female student at Harvard (his university) was paired with another randomly; the viewer would then decide which picture they liked better. The site got tens of thousands of hits in the first couple of hours it went live, and shut the Harvard internet down. Harvard subsequently removed the site, and he faced charges for violation of privacy.
Being impressed by his work, three other Harvard students came to him with an idea for a Harvard-exclusive social network, wanting him to make it; he said he'd do it. He then proceeded to formulate a social network under his own steam, with some help from Eduardo Saverin, a friend at Harvard. He eventually made the site live, calling it thefacebook.com. It grew rapidly, attracting the attention of the three students who had approached Mark originally. They were angry at Mark seemingly stealing their idea.
The site expanded to other universities nearby; Mark brought in a couple more roommates to help with the growing demand. It eventually hit Stanford and drew the attention of Sean Parker, the man behind Napster. Eduardo then attempted to set up several meetings with potential investors to attempt to get monetary input into the company; thus far, it was running off his. A meeting was also made with Sean Parker. The meetings with investors did not go well; Mark was disinterested, and projected a bad attitude to the investors. The meeting with Sean went better according to Mark; Eduardo was unimpressed. Sean did, however, suggest changing it to just "facebook". He also suggested that they move to California.
Facebook expands further, and garners a couple more interns; Mark wants to move to California. Eduardo is reluctant, but puts his money on the line. Eduardo stays in New York, trying to make more connections; Mark moves down with the rest of the team, and Sean moves in shortly after. Eduardo comes down for a visit; he is unimpressed by the influence Sean has had on Mark, and freezes his account. Sean connects Mark up with a large investor, who decides to put in half a million. Facebook goes international. Mark tells Eduardo about the investor; he agrees to come back to sign a contract. (Account is presumably unfrozen.) Contract is signed; Eduardo has 30%, Mark just over 50%, Sean 7%, various other employees the remainder.
Facebook is close to reaching a million. Eduardo gets called back for a "business meeting", and for the millionth user party. He instead gets more paperwork; his share has been reduced by 100 times - down to 0.3%. He is furious with Mark, and decides to sue him for everything. The three other students who originally approached Mark about the idea also sue on grounds of intellectual property theft. Sean is busted doing drugs at the party. Mark is unimpressed; perhaps "disillusioned" is a good word here as well.
He settles with both parties.
At the end of the movie, he is shown refreshing the page constantly of a friend request he has just made to the girl who dumped him at the start of the movie.

That wasn't particularly short, I know. Difficult to condense down without losing a lot. Hopefully, however, you get a bit of the storyline there. What you won't get so much, however, is who Mark Zuckerberg was.

Mark is portrayed in the movie (I obviously can't speak for how he is in real life) as an absolute genius. And a genius who couldn't be bothered wasting his time on people who were just slowing him down. The thing was; pretty much everyone did, according to him. He could be described as paranoid; naive; obsessive; indifferent; impulsive.
But the interesting thing, I think, is this; Mark never did anything, as such, to intentionally hurt people. He didn't care if he offended them; that was his fun, in a way, as is alluded to frequently. But every time he does something that hurts somebody, he doesn't realise that it will. He just didn't think about it. And he understands people, strangely enough - "I don't hate anybody. The "Winklevii" aren't suing me for intellectual property theft. They're suing me because for the first time in their lives, things didn't go exactly the way they were supposed to for them." I also just love that 'Winklevii' note. (Two of the three suing him were twins - the Winklevosses.)
But anyway. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, particularly given it's a Hollywood interpretation of a person. I just see a lot of parallels between him and me, I guess. We were raised quite differently, but apart from that - we're both very smart. Socially alienated. Somewhat naive to how the world works, and as such, can be considered impulsive. (Not me so much, but still.) Obsessive in regards to some things; these consume our attention, thus giving the appearance of indifference. And we're paranoid that what we obsess over, what we pour our skill and time into, won't work out.
But perhaps more crucially. At the end of the day, we crave a relationship. All through the movie, you see subtle signs of that - "But I don't want friends." "Can we just talk for a minute?" "Do you ever think about that girl?" *Click* *click* *click* *click*. Endlessly hoping, at the end of the day, for a miracle. Perhaps that's the real naivety; the real obsession; the true impulsiveness. I can't - and don't, by the way, in case you're wondering if he's paying me to write this or something - speak for Mark, but I get pretty blinkered when it comes to this sort of thing. Which can - which does - get annoying for me. Because other people waltz in, and they're fantastic. They're amazing. But they're not that person. And, yes. I am probably only writing this because I'm somewhat depressed, it's late at night/early in the morning, and I probably will have to end up answering awkward questions about this from people I don't kow that well, or don't want to talk about this with.

But what did I say? Impulsive. "Yes, it may be a long way down; but oh, what a glorious flight!" That one's not from this movie.

And yes; it was a good movie, if you were wondering.