"The Social Network" Retrospective: The Millennium's Most Overrated Movie

Style trumps substance in this confused depiction of the founding of Facebook.

September 5, 2023

In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg was a Psychology and Computer Science major at Harvard University, which lacked an electronic student directory. Zuckerberg told the student newspaper, The Crimson, that he could make one "better than they can... in a week.” He began writing code for a website, which launched one month later.

Facebook was born.

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Six days later, three fellow students told The Crimson that Zuckerberg stole their idea for “HarvardConnection.com,” promising development assistance before poaching their concept. When the paper investigated, Zuckerberg monitored their attempts to access Facebook and hacked staff members' email accounts.

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Facebook became a social media giant and multi-billion dollar company that made Zuckerberg the ninth-richest person in the world. A string of lawsuits shrouded the company’s founding in secrecy, fueling our collective awe. We basked in the glow of a world-changing innovator while questioning if all he did (and how) was worth it.

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Nineteen years after its launch, Facebook's social relevance has dwindled, but we remember when it all began. It will never truly die, but it shall never stand as tall again, a death unto itself. The Social Network is the story of that now-dying giant.

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Zuckerberg and his girlfriend, Erica, sit in a bar. The discussion is initially mild, though her resentment simmers. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg's general contempt and neediness become apparent. He aches for connection on principle, seeking validation through the class of relationship he can attain. He cares in a way too distant for most to understand but tangible to those who can separate a traditional presentation of decency from its true meaning. Erica does not threaten his masculinity because he roots his self-worth in his intellect, which he believes supreme.

Despite this, her necessity prevents him from viewing her as beneath him. Having a girlfriend entices him most, but this does not compromise his humanity. Eduardo, his friend and co-founder, assumes his ignorance about what it means to get listed as a founder, but he is wrong. Mark knows and cares what it will mean to Eduardo's father. He merely shows it in his way.

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The movie hints at that exploration but doesn't follow through. Instead of explaining Zuckerberg's ambition and exposing his rationales, it masks its emptiness with style, passing brooding cinematography and rapid-fire put-downs for illumination. It occasionally makes good choices, like telling its primary story through the litigation process and thus informing both ends of its thematic spectrum. We marvel at Zuckerberg’s acidic wit and quick cuts to the truth, a turn from the typical movie narcissist.

It is more interesting to walk that fine line, neither delving into overlong monologues nor relying on general rudeness to make points. It makes him irritated with stupidity instead of indignant by a challenge. If the Winklevoss twins had invented Facebook, they would have invented Facebook.

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Unfortunately, this understanding is short-lived. The movie reduces the creation of Facebook to the pissy revenge saga of a pseudo-intellectual incel, as though the world’s foremost social media authority is the brainchild of a nerd's inability to get laid. Key developments (the creation of Facemash - which allows male students to compare women's attractiveness - to Ivy League expansion) stem from Zuckerberg’s desire to exact revenge or prove his worth to a female. If anything gets based upon this pettiness, the movie cannot convince us nothing else did.

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Thus, his genius is a mystery outside the witticisms he exchanges with intellectual inferiors, which we could get from anywhere. The genius that allows designs to flourish and the ambition that drives ideas from a tiny dorm room to Silicon Valley are absent. We see him want, but everyone wants. People want a higher-paying job, a new car, a lover, or a friend. Zuckerberg desires on a different level, one the movie mistakes as being something it can simply acknowledge. You cannot base thematics on a triviality and have stakes, no matter how brooding you visualize, contemplatively you score, or quickly you speak.

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The Social Network thinks the more fast-talking characters it sets against dim lighting and ominous music, the easier it can distract from the limp handling of its story, and in a sense, it is correct. It routinely gets hailed as the film of its generation; every trick it employs to pass for a great movie, it plays well. Within that deception is a twisted merit, but not one that makes a film truly great.

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When The Social Network finds what makes a movie truly great, it feels like one. It is well-paced, using clever editing to balance the experience of gaining and losing instead of relying on accelerated mannerisms. Its constant movement reflects a meteoric rise, as genius bursts free and ascends without any notion of what awaits, almost as though everything happens too fast to mature into it gracefully. If the film wanted to explore these ideas and develop them to say something substantial, it could have.

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Instead, it dismisses Zuckerberg by making him a product of female rejection, the cheapest form of development. It is how the film’s final line justifies who it made him. He’s not truly an asshole, he's "just trying so hard to be.” We know men can turn spiteful, petty, pissy, and vengeful when rejected by women; that is as true of a pot-bellied alcoholic sprawled out in a double-wide as a Harvard-bred entrepreneur fronting the world's foremost social media empire. The knowledge Zuckerberg can never wholly detach from his humanity is worth imparting, but The Social Network never realizes the story did that itself.

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Eduardo looks his former friend in the eyes as his attorney goes through every executive and asks him how much their shares got reduced in a $500,000 investment deal.

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“What was Mr. Zuckerberg’s ownership share diluted down to?”

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“It wasn’t.”

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“What was Mr. Moskowitz’s ownership share diluted down to?”

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“It wasn’t.”

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“What was Sean Parker’s ownership share diluted down to?”

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“It wasn’t.”

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“What was Peter Thiel’s ownership share diluted down to?”

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“It wasn’t.”

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“And what was your ownership share diluted down to?”

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“.03%”

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It is not the ethical debate where contrarians feign heightened perspective by writing off Zuckerberg’s betrayal as savvy business or the opposition moralizing it to condemn him entirely. It is not Eduardo's accountability for not having his lawyers survey the documents before he signed. It is not just the heartbreak in his eyes as he recounts how his friend destroyed him.

It is why his heart is broken: not even thinking to have his lawyers survey the documents before he signed them because there couldn't be a reason to do so. His friend wouldn’t do that. The man he started it all within that small Harvard dorm room wouldn't do that. The man who put him on the masthead as a founder because he knew how much it meant to him would not do that. For all his flaws, for all the ways everyone saw him, he knew the truth.

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Every question of friendship and loyalty, the cost of aspiration, and notion of big business' worth is in the people with whom we realize our dreams. Mark’s bond with Eduardo, the allure of Sean's California paradise, and the gradual ease with which a boy intent on his genius morphs into a man who allows that genius to make him something he did not need to become are natural progressions.

The story is about companionship, loss, betrayal, and the quest for resolve as we battle against the urge to justify our actions. The movie feels entitled to our validation, but belief comes from self-belief. If Mark is, to the core, simply a great mind burdened by female perceptions, he cannot be a true innovator. A man with an idea who gained everything as quickly as he lost it is more complex than a boy using his brain to resolve his feelings about women.

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The Social Network fails because it is indecisive. It does not freeze Mark in the face of achievement or make him aware he is crossing lines but powerless to correct course. It hints at both but chooses neither because it trivialized him long ago. It can begin with calling him an “asshole” and end with saying he’s not, but everything in between has to justify it: they cannot mean something simply by existing.

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The Social Network came before we learned the extent of Zuckerberg’s deceit. In that way, the film exposes itself as less prescient than its clever dialogue believes; we mistook its topicality for genuine commentary. Zuckerberg's vision brought great prosperity and international awe, but we eventually discovered the damage he inflicted. Just as our detachment grew, enslaving us to screens and sheltering us from meaningful interaction, he would sit alone, aching for the connectedness his creation robbed from the billions who made him a billionaire. The Social Network can only claim to know this in retrospect, rendering the claim fraudulent.

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It is not retrospective to say The Social Network was never what we believed. Our path was inevitable. Every human development has gotten exploited, developed, and expanded until overstretched; the consequences of the initial impact can thus only increase in severity. The Social Network says what common sense dictated long before it and about many different things. The only way the film had a chance to resonate was its style, which suffers from diminishing returns. No amount of foreboding and emotional distance can create meaning. It must understand its subject and explore them, but The Social Network leaves such humanity in the cold, Cambridge night.

It is not until it winds down, as Parker and Mark's relationship crumbles and Mark faces the loss of everything he had before he achieved the dream, that the movie finds something worthwhile. It lets itself breathe, allowing people to genuinely say something when they speak instead of zipping through conversations and monologues.

It inspires introspection in these moments, but every reflection is only a wish. We wish it would have gone deeper and emerged with something interesting. We wish it had a true vision for Mark, but it does not. It does none of these things because it cares more for appearances than results. You cannot trivialize a movie five minutes in and expect it to be meaningful because you opened a thesaurus and filmed under a lamppost.

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‍The Social Network reflects our willful ignorance. We should not have gotten blindsided by the Facebook data-stealing scandal, Zuckerberg's immorality, or the extent to which social media has come to dominate our lives. History overflows with tales of technology whose impact extended beyond its initial application, sometimes to disastrous results. It is a collection of cautionary tales urging us to reconsider how deeply we imbue ourselves with power we cannot comprehend. The Social Network does not seek to dispel the wonderment we projected onto Zuckerberg and his empire a decade ago or even try to understand what created it or at what cost. It just wants to be clever, be artsy, and log out.