The SOCIAL NETWORK

“The SOCIAL NETWORK” (Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield & Justin Timberlake)

I was told to expect to dislike Jesse Eisenberg’s true-life character Mark Zuckerberg within the first 5 minutes of ‘The Social Network’, but that didn’t happen... it took about 2 minutes to just dislike him which gradually turns to a deep seeded hatred as the film progresses.
The Nerd Zuckerberg is shown conversing with a young woman in a pub. Zuckerberg talks at a rate of 2,000 words per minute and says virtually nothing. As he bounces from subject to subject without slowly his breakneck speaking speed I wondered why this girl would subject herself to this inane torture. I assumed she was a student Zuckerberg was tutoring so she had to associate with this clown – when it is revealed that the couple are dating, I was more appalled by her than him – Why didn’t she simply get up and walk away from this jackass?
I worked at a sportsradio station for 18 years in Seattle, so when Zuckerberg ‘invents’ Mitch’s Bigger Dance (Matching two females against one another & voting which one is hotter) I wasn’t impressed – Mitch was doing it years before Zuckerberg & although I like him, I would never consider Mitch to be a ‘genius’ for coming up with this idea – the boys at Harvard, however, would.
In the first half hour or so of ‘The Social Network’ I knew what was going on, but I really didn’t care – it was meaningless to me. ‘Inventing’ a website similar to several others didn’t strike me as brilliance – it was boring.
The younger generation that actually uses these communication sites to post unnecessary communiqués might have been fascinated by it – but I couldn’t fathom why – it really isn’t a mind-numbing or world changing invention, so what’s the big deal? (& I’m talking about websites where people post what they’re having for lunch & what they’re planning to have for dinner later on – not the entire www . world)
The characters were speaking English, but I didn’t understand half of what they were saying – I began to realize why no one wanted to bad mouth this film – they were afraid it would make them appear to be stupid... I don’t have that problem. I often found myself thinking “Who Cares?” after most scenes because I certainly didn’t.
So the actual inventing (or ripping off the idea) of Facebook is, as I expected, a dull, uninteresting story – what saves this film from being a complete disaster is what happens afterward; when The Nerd Zuckerberg goes from being an annoying know-it-all into a complete Douche Bag (& yes, I meant to use capital letters because this is what I would have nicknamed Zuckerberg if I had known the guy – D. B. for short)
The story perks up when Nerd Zuckerberg interfaces with another professional rip-off artist, Sean Parker (Dusty Craterlake) and they begin to scheme as to how to totally screw over the only friend Zuckerberg had, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield)
Fellow Harvard student Eduardo provided the financial backing for Zuckerberg’s dream of ripping off the Winklevoss Twins’ idea of creating a social network on the internet. In D. B.’s mind the fact that he ‘tweaked’ the Winklevoss plan made it his domain.
The movie bounces between flashbacks and a deposition involving Douche Bag’s & Saverin’s lawyers – That wasn’t annoying, in this case it helped the viewer figure out what was going on. At times, Zuckerberg actually shows some slight compassion for the friend he completely f---ed over, but those moments are brief and don’t erase the fact that Zuckerberg is, underneath that mindless nerdy chattering robot brain, still a Douche Bag.
His ex-girlfriend (the one from the opening scene, and another victim of D.B.’s egomaniacal callousness) tells him when he attempts to win her back, “You think everything you have to say is so brilliant that it must be shared by everyone.”
Which perfectly describes this guy. Sure, his knowledge of computers and hacking and the fact that his fingers go whizzing across a keyboard almost as fast as he talks is impressive, but what did he actually ‘invent’? Something that was already available - which he stole, tweaked & used to make himself one of the world’s wealthiest Douche Bags.
And it all started from blogging . . . something HAS to be done to stop these guys from just writing whatever they feel about people... what they’re eating... or movies that they’ve seen. It just isn’t healthy for society to be hanging on these jerks every word. . .
So I’m thinking Taco Time for lunch. Do you LIKE THIS? Do you want to leave a COMMENT?