00:00:00 ◼ ► Social Network. The 2010 American biographical drama about the beginning of Facebook. This movie was directed by David Fincher, written by Aaron Sorkin, and stars, I would say, maybe infamously at this point, Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, and more.
00:00:19 ◼ ► Yeah, I feel like this is Eisenberg's iconic role. I hadn't seen the movie before then, but every time I see Jesse Eisenberg, it's like, oh, even I know.
00:00:30 ◼ ► It's one of the great all-time castings, I think, and obviously we're talking about the movie, but I will jump all the way ahead in my notes at this point.
00:00:38 ◼ ► What I wonder is, do people think of Mark Zuckerberg's personality because of the way Jesse Eisenberg portrayed him, or was Mark Zuckerberg always like that?
00:00:51 ◼ ► Like, I think people are very aware of the portrayal of him in this movie, and I think it has led to part of the way in which people describe Mark Zuckerberg as, like, this robot.
00:01:04 ◼ ► I think it's one of those cycle things where, like, he was maybe like that, and that's why the portrayal is that way, but, like, the role is so well done, and Eisenberg does such a good job, that it's basically like, oh, yeah, that's just Mark Zuckerberg.
00:01:18 ◼ ► You didn't even finish the intro, and it's like, all right, get right to the beating heart of, like, everything that this movie is about.
00:01:26 ◼ ► That question lines up with something interesting, which is a very line from the end of the movie where a character tells him, like, you're not an a**hole, you're just really trying to be one, which does feel like maybe in real life became quite a meta thing.
00:01:41 ◼ ► I feel like you have gotten, like, straight to the core of the movie before we have even begun.
00:01:55 ◼ ► Yeah, I had never seen it, and it's one of those movies where I just felt like it's a combination of two things.
00:02:03 ◼ ► I felt like I didn't have any interest in seeing it, and also because the movie is quite iconic, right?
00:02:24 ◼ ► And even just the little bit that I had seen from scenes always gave me the impression of, like, I don't think this is a movie for me.
00:02:36 ◼ ► But I just, I had very strongly the feeling of, like, I don't think this is a movie that I would enjoy.
00:02:54 ◼ ► So, all of that is partly why, like, in the past, whenever, since it came out, I never got around to actually watching it.
00:03:03 ◼ ► Before I ask you the obvious question, I will just say, Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay.
00:03:12 ◼ ► There was a book proposal by Ben Mesrick, and the book's called The Accidental Billionaires.
00:03:17 ◼ ► However, while this book was being written, the movie rights were already being optioned.
00:03:25 ◼ ► They told him, like, what the book was about, which was basically following the two court cases that were occurring.
00:03:48 ◼ ► I think Douglas Adams was both writing the radio version and the book at the same time, and they came out around the same time.
00:03:59 ◼ ► This is based on Aaron Sorkin heard about the idea of a book, and the rights were purchased, and then wrote a movie, but the book itself wasn't actually finished.
00:04:11 ◼ ► And so, Aaron Sorkin, like you, has said, like, because I've been watching some interviews with him about the movie, and he said he never used Facebook, never wanted to use Facebook, had no interest in Facebook, but found the story interesting.
00:04:32 ◼ ► The movie opens, and it's Mark Zuckerberg, and he's sitting down with his girlfriend, and they're just, like, having a conversation.
00:04:40 ◼ ► It's this very, like, fast, back-and-forth dialogue, where they're talking to each other, but Zuckerberg is, like, thinking about three things at once, and so he's sort of having three conversations in parallel, like, with his girlfriend.
00:04:57 ◼ ► And, again, the movie, like, both starts and ends with commenting on Zuckerberg being an a**hole, where she breaks up with him in, like, the meanest possible way, but perhaps also in, like, quite direct way, by saying, like, oh, you think girls will hate you because you're a nerd, but girls will hate you because you're an a**hole.
00:05:26 ◼ ► That scene played out, and I got to the end of that scene, and I thought, I am going to f***ing hate this movie, and boy, was I right.
00:05:42 ◼ ► It's, like, I can give credit to this kind of dialogue style, but I find it intolerable.
00:06:11 ◼ ► Just to be clear, I mean, it's modern Shakespeare, and I mean that in the most negative of all possible ways.
00:06:17 ◼ ► I think Shakespeare, as far as I could tell, like, he was popular in his day, and apparently was writing in something that was closer to a vernacular, but, like, he was clever in his writing.
00:06:40 ◼ ► In modern times for most audiences and most performers, it's, like, entirely about how it sounds and barely about the words themselves in a certain way.
00:06:50 ◼ ► And so it feels like it is pompous and flowery in a modern context that just, like, doesn't need to be the case.
00:06:57 ◼ ► And so this style of writing, which is, like, the Aaron Sorkin-ish, I guess, dialogue style, I feel like this movie is that style turned up to 11.
00:07:16 ◼ ► So it's like, I remember having seen some episodes of The West Wing, and, like, The West Wing does have this style, but it doesn't feel like it was turned up as, like, high as it was in this.
00:07:27 ◼ ► Oh, I always even had, like, slightly mixed feelings about The West Wing, partly because of the way that the dialogue was done.
00:07:36 ◼ ► But the problem is, it's like, so I watch this scene, and I'm like, oh, my God, here we go.
00:07:42 ◼ ► And then the movie, like, rolls straight over into Zuckerberg goes home and starts coding up this thing called FaceMash, which they, like, have as a kind of precursor to Facebook.
00:07:54 ◼ ► And while he's doing this, he's, like, dramatically live blogging, like, what a terrible girl, like, his ex-girlfriend is, and then also what he's doing with the coding.
00:08:03 ◼ ► And at that point, I was like, I'm sorry, I need to stop right now, and I just need to check something.
00:08:12 ◼ ► The thing I wanted to check was, like, was he live blogging his creation of this site while he was doing it one night?
00:08:28 ◼ ► But the critical piece of information that I stumbled across then, which, like, absolutely for me, just, like, doubled down on everything I was going to hate about the movie, was like, oh, he was dating the woman who would become his wife at this point in college?
00:08:45 ◼ ► Aaron Sorkin says, the person who is in this movie, Erica Albright, is not the name of the person who he is writing about.
00:08:56 ◼ ► And that there is a person, he has spoken to them, and he has taken their name out for anonymity.
00:09:16 ◼ ► And it's, like, it is also why I feel like I tend to avoid this kind of thing, where it's a movie that is, like, a dramatization about someone's life.
00:09:26 ◼ ► Because it's a little bit, like, in trying to find out the story of someone's life, like, this is quite hard anyway.
00:09:33 ◼ ► Because in the dramatization of somebody's life, and, like, trying to tell this story, it's like, what do you have to rely on?
00:09:59 ◼ ► And, like, I just don't rate very highly Aaron Sorkin says a girl told him this thing, even if someone did.
00:10:12 ◼ ► Another thing, let's park the girl thing about, because I don't know if that is part of, like, what is in what I'm about to say.
00:10:17 ◼ ► Aaron Sorkin says everything that happens in the movie is taken from the two depositions that are given in court cases.
00:10:25 ◼ ► And he says one of the great things about being able to write something like this is you see, kind of on display, the way in which truth is manipulated.
00:10:38 ◼ ► And he says, and I, as a script writer, I chose across all three versions to tell my story based on what I thought was the best thing for telling the story.
00:10:48 ◼ ► And so there's all these versions of history and he could just weave a narrative through them.
00:10:56 ◼ ► I'm actually going to hit on the same thing, which is, like, there's this opening scene about how, like, Zuckerberg creates face masks and, like, he's doing it because this girl broke up with him.
00:11:02 ◼ ► And probably the moment that I like the movie the best is, like, they run through this opening scene and then exactly this.
00:11:17 ◼ ► And so, like, the whole movie is being framed as you're watching what happens and then every once in a while they remind you, oh, you're watching what people are telling in the deposition.
00:11:32 ◼ ► And so, like, that's interesting to hear that this is sort of Aaron Sorkin's perspective on, like, why he created the movie and, like, what's interesting to him about it.
00:11:43 ◼ ► Like, I can understand this from the perspective of the creator who feels like they're doing an interesting thing.
00:11:50 ◼ ► But what I don't like about this is the thing that gets right to what you were saying about Zuckerberg in some sense is, but nonetheless, like, you can do the thing where you say, like, ah, what you're watching is just the testimony from the deposition.
00:12:05 ◼ ► And, like, who knows what happens, but when you're actually watching a movie where, like, 90% of the content is not reminding you that you're in the deposition and you're portraying all of these things.
00:12:18 ◼ ► Most people come away from watching a movie like this remembering, like, what it is that they saw and feeling like this is the story.
00:12:26 ◼ ► Like, I don't think most people watch this movie and come away with a, like, well, wouldn't it be interesting to wonder what happened?
00:12:33 ◼ ► It's like, I think the movie portrays a kind of clear story, in a way, of what happened and is not playing a kind of, like, oh, isn't it interesting to think about what might happen?
00:12:50 ◼ ► Like, if every now and then Aaron Sorkin pops in and is like, by the way, this is fake.
00:13:34 ◼ ► There's no way to make a movie, right, about this topic without making a movie like this.
00:13:44 ◼ ► It's more like of the list of all movies I could potentially watch, why would I watch a movie that is simultaneously doing two things?
00:14:03 ◼ ► Like, there's lots of individual elements that like, if I separate it from the story that it's telling, like, are good.
00:14:16 ◼ ► because it's simultaneously doing the thing of, like, telling you and really putting in your mind, like, a very strong version of history of, like, what happened while simultaneously shrugging its shoulders and, like, passing off responsibility to be like, well, I'm just telling you what was happening in the depositions.
00:15:04 ◼ ► If you want to make a broadly entertaining movie on this topic, like, this is functionally the only way.
00:15:09 ◼ ► But I just don't, like, the existence of the movie kind of makes me feel gross a little bit.
00:15:27 ◼ ► Not because of the portrayal of him in the movie where he is just, like, a total resentful a**hole.
00:15:37 ◼ ► Like, I have never seen an actor who does a better job of, like, constantly looking bitter and resentful without crossing some kind of, like, comedy line.
00:15:51 ◼ ► And feeling, like, what an albatross, like, the existence of this movie is for this person.
00:15:57 ◼ ► Like, what a, like, searing and enduring image, like, blasted into people's minds of what Mark Zuckerberg is like.
00:16:11 ◼ ► And I think, like, some of the things that have happened with Zuckerberg, as we've gone on in time, are probably a result of the existence of this movie and a result of that portrayal itself.
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00:18:15 ◼ ► I am going to keep coming back to, like, I'm not saying, like, Aaron Sorkin shouldn't have made the movie, but from my perspective, it's like, oh, I don't like the existence of this movie.
00:18:26 ◼ ► I don't like this kind of dramatization of a person's life that is simultaneously, like, very strong and then gives itself, like, a little out to be like, maybe this isn't true.
00:19:05 ◼ ► So, ultimately, you always have to be compressing a thing and simplifying stuff, right?
00:19:17 ◼ ► But the thing that particularly bothers me about this one, and I feel like is the reason why, from even just knowing a little bit about it, is why I stayed away from it.
00:19:27 ◼ ► It's the incredibly heavy-handed style of it that bothers me when you add that on top of the difficulty of trying to tell this story.
00:19:38 ◼ ► Because the style comes across as impossibly competent and impossibly confident in what it's telling you.
00:19:49 ◼ ► So, like, the style of the movie works entirely against what did Aaron Sorkin have to work with when he was creating this.
00:20:03 ◼ ► It's like an impossibly slick thing that burns a particular story, like, right into people's minds.
00:20:10 ◼ ► Again, like, my own personal irritation is the stuff where, like, I'm absolutely sure Aaron Sorkin thought, like, ah, he's being very clever.
00:20:17 ◼ ► It's like, to skip to the end of the movie, it's like, there's a character again who's talking to Mark Zuckerberg.
00:20:22 ◼ ► And just kind of, like, almost blew my lid after watching the whole movie where they're reflecting on what has just happened with these court cases.
00:20:29 ◼ ► And she's like, when there is emotional testimony, I assume that 85% of it is exaggeration.
00:20:41 ◼ ► And it's like, oh my god, this is, like, the movie just, like, commenting on itself in a way that just, like, absolutely irritates me to be like,
00:20:51 ◼ ► hey, you've just watched a creation myth about Facebook, and so obviously we needed to make Mark Zuckerberg more of a devil.
00:20:57 ◼ ► But it's like, that is not the impression that is, like, left on you after watching the movie.
00:21:03 ◼ ► You feel like you have watched what happened with Facebook, but the movie's giving itself this, like, little out to be like,
00:21:29 ◼ ► Yeah, but it's different if you're doing, like, a war movie and you're focusing on a character who's existing, like, in the context of the war.
00:21:36 ◼ ► It's like, the moment you're trying to make a movie which is, like, dramatized but borderline fictionalized, but you are also making it about a real person.
00:21:50 ◼ ► It's a little bit like, I don't know if you've ever seen The Greatest Showman, which is, like, a musical about Barnum and Bailey.
00:22:04 ◼ ► Like, they've changed, like, every single detail in the world to, like, make this movie about how the circus came to be.
00:22:23 ◼ ► Like, making a movie about a known person is much more likely to get people to watch the movie.
00:22:28 ◼ ► But that still is fundamentally my frustration is feeling like I am watching something that is, like, borderline fictionalized or just, like, cannot be presented in this way.
00:22:37 ◼ ► That is, nonetheless, about an actual person who I don't even like very much, but I feel bad for that person that this piece of media exists in the world and, like, will forever be the first thing that people think of when they're interacting with the actual person who's still alive.
00:22:57 ◼ ► It's like, again, not even having ever seen it, it's like, oh, I had an idea of this portrayal that Jesse Eisenberg does of Zuckerberg.
00:23:09 ◼ ► Like, I think for a long time, the Jesse Eisenberg portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg was the only way that people thought about him.
00:23:16 ◼ ► I think Mark Zuckerberg, at this point, has established enough of a personality of his own, especially in recent years, that I do think he's changed who he is to the world a little bit.
00:23:28 ◼ ► But I'm sure some of it still remains, but I don't believe it is as prevailing as it was for probably five to ten years after this movie came out.
00:23:39 ◼ ► I was like, ah, are you saying 15 years later it's not as prevailing as it was probably for the first decade of its existence?
00:23:51 ◼ ► Like, having watched this movie, I was thinking a few times how, and again, I don't know the exact details, but I have heard these stories of, like, oh, when the movie came out, like, Zuckerberg took everybody who worked at Facebook to go see it.
00:24:03 ◼ ► And he's, like, in various ways leaned into the movie to some extent in his, like, public life.
00:24:21 ◼ ► Yeah, but I guess, like, what I was just going to say there is I kept thinking about how you're Zuckerberg and you're a public person.
00:24:29 ◼ ► Zuckerberg really only has two options, which is, like, to either never comment on it or to lean into it or, like, double down on it in a certain way.
00:24:44 ◼ ► Like, oh, probably taking all of the Facebook employees to go see it was, like, a good idea from just, like, a strategic perspective.
00:24:51 ◼ ► Anyway, that's my thought about the movie from, like, the opening scene is, like, I expected to hate it.
00:26:09 ◼ ► And I remember at the time being super excited for this movie because it was a quote unquote
00:26:20 ◼ ► When it was first announced, people thought it was a ridiculous idea to make a movie about
00:26:24 ◼ ► I think top to bottom, the performances in this movie are incredible, including Justin Timberlake.
00:26:35 ◼ ► Like I was racking my brain to be like, I don't feel like I've seen him in a lot of movies,
00:26:56 ◼ ► That's just great meta casting, too, to get a musician to play the guy who created Napster.
00:27:29 ◼ ► So the score of this movie was the first Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross collaboration movie score, Nine Inch Nails.
00:27:48 ◼ ► And after this movie came out in my wider friend group and the communities that I was in online, the score to this movie was everybody's work music.
00:28:21 ◼ ► And I now respect it more having done research on it in the last couple of days and like learning about like how that was actually the way in which the movie was conceived was based upon the transcripts from the depositions.
00:28:34 ◼ ► I thought that that was a very interesting way, both from a storytelling perspective, but also from like a research perspective to tell the story like this.
00:28:43 ◼ ► I mean, I probably haven't seen this movie probably in 10 years, honestly, like it's been a really long time.
00:28:58 ◼ ► I did notice that if I separate the thing about the real person that this movie is about from like the movie itself, it does have the qualities for me that make a good movie,
00:29:13 ◼ ► And I was very aware of like, oh, lots of places where they just didn't even need to do that.
00:29:25 ◼ ► There's even like a half second shot where I was like, I can't believe someone thought to do that, where they show students who are using the FaceMash website.
00:29:38 ◼ ► So it's like every time it's showing, here's the two girls that you're comparing to each other.
00:29:51 ◼ ► What it actually kind of gave me the feeling of was like Mr. Robot vibes of like, oh, they have someone on set who cares about these details and like wanted to make sure to get these things right.
00:30:04 ◼ ► Like, oh, they're like writing out the chess ranking algorithm, which is like it kind of made me smile.
00:30:08 ◼ ► It's like, oh, has the chess ranking algorithm ever performed a dramatic role in a movie before?
00:30:17 ◼ ► And it sure does hit on a particular feeling at a particular time when the Internet is new, but also still omnipresent enough in like college students' life.
00:30:33 ◼ ► And you do have that feeling of this distinction between everyone who is young and is aware of the existence of these things.
00:30:39 ◼ ► And then they're working within the framework where like everyone who's part of the older generation, like the lawyers at the deposition or the head of Harvard or like everybody else is like disconnected from what is actually happening with this website.
00:30:58 ◼ ► Like, I feel like it did do a good job of portraying that moment in time as this like delicate balance.
00:31:03 ◼ ► I also really like similarly how they did a lot of work to recreate how Facebook looked, the visual of it at the time.
00:31:12 ◼ ► And I appreciated that kind of detail because, again, as you said, they didn't need to go to the detail that they did to make it kind of feel, I guess, as real as it could.
00:31:22 ◼ ► What I like about it is in these moments, it's like because I'm not a computer programmer, but it's like, oh, I can recognize some of these things.
00:31:32 ◼ ► But it's nice to see, like, when they do those things correct, like when you flash forward to a later scene and it's like Jesse Eisenberg is in this operating system class and there's like a thing that's up on the board that the professor is talking about.
00:31:52 ◼ ► But I can feel confident in the movie that, like, I am sure that was selected for a reason.
00:32:01 ◼ ► It's like, oh, for people who are computer programmers, like, that scene is probably nice for them to, like, also be able to recognize the, like, thing that the movie is doing there.
00:32:10 ◼ ► And it's nice to watch something and feel like that's probably a real thing because, like, the lower level stuff that I do recognize, it's like, oh, yeah, they nailed all of that.
00:32:19 ◼ ► So I can feel, like, confident in the movie in at least that part of representing reality.
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00:34:19 ◼ ► So in the scene with hilariously Dakota Johnson and Justin Timberlake when they're kind of like waking up in the morning and he is finding out about Facebook for the first time, right?
00:34:40 ◼ ► I think it could be easy to look at that line and be like, oh, that's like a wink and a nod.
00:34:53 ◼ ► Like in 2025, the idea of calling a social network addictive because you go on it five times a day, that's hilarious, right?
00:35:13 ◼ ► Facebook aside, like just the idea of social networking, it wasn't considered to be as negative as people think of it now or addictive.
00:35:24 ◼ ► I don't think we considered smartphone addiction a thing in 2010 because most people still didn't have one.
00:35:36 ◼ ► Like it wasn't until the iPhone 5, iPhone 6 when that really exploded around the world.
00:35:42 ◼ ► Even like when the movie is coming out, like what's the time period that it is existing in?
00:35:46 ◼ ► And I was just trying to off the top of my head feel something like, oh, when does the tide turn on the internet in some ways?
00:36:08 ◼ ► That was the time period in which Apple and Google were kind of forced without actually being forced to try and put things in our phones, graphs and charts.
00:36:20 ◼ ► So we could keep an eye on ourselves and meter ourselves as if we would ever do such a thing, you know?
00:36:27 ◼ ► It's like, ah, digital well-being is the feature on Android developed by Google announced at Google I.O. in 2018.
00:36:33 ◼ ► But I guess that kind of makes sense of, oh, it's a reaction to the things that were happening earlier.
00:36:49 ◼ ► And so like that is the area in which people, I think, started to look more negatively at social networks and ergo their phones because that's where we get that stuff.
00:37:14 ◼ ► They were like they're going out and being with people to want to spend that time on Facebook was a thing.
00:37:20 ◼ ► And I have been coming back to this thought a lot over the last few days since watching the movie again.
00:37:27 ◼ ► And maybe this is just me being nostalgic, but I think the Internet was better for society when it was just on our computers.
00:37:57 ◼ ► And so I kind of like that part of where I am in the millennial bucket because there are a bunch of millennials who grew up with the Internet.
00:38:07 ◼ ► But I also remember like I would have my computer, you know, when I was a teen, I had my Mac and I would come home from school and I'd spend a bunch of time online.
00:38:41 ◼ ► And I think that while so much of the world has been improved by having the Internet in my pocket, right, like mapping, for example, right, like being able to find new places and get around.
00:38:53 ◼ ► I think the level at which we're connected to the wider world, not the people on our lives, like the whole Internet, I think that is not good for us on the whole.
00:39:04 ◼ ► I think it is good to have that connection in our lives and to be able to kind of understand more about people from all over the world and all of the good things that that can bring.
00:39:14 ◼ ► But in a limited way, I think is better than the way that we have it today, where it is a constant thing that we're using and experiencing.
00:39:28 ◼ ► Seeing this scene hit me at the exact right time as I am once again considering my relationship to social networking.
00:39:40 ◼ ► And I saw this movie and I'm like, yes, I think this is good, right, what I'm wanting to do to kind of, like, detach my iPhone from social networking a little bit.
00:39:52 ◼ ► I found it to be fascinating and it's just made me think that, like, the innocence of the early 2000s is something that I long for a little bit.
00:40:04 ◼ ► There is something about that to me right now that feels a little better than, like, hey, I'm looking at, like, six things right now to get the internet.
00:40:17 ◼ ► It's like the movie is really presenting this limited window of time where it's like, oh, computers exist and the internet exists, but it hasn't gone mobile yet.
00:40:30 ◼ ► So it's like, oh, that is the time period of, like, the 2000s of computers exist, but mobile internet doesn't.
00:40:37 ◼ ► I didn't think about it in exactly that way, but that might be the time period in a way of, like, peak potential for good relationship with connective technology at that point.
00:40:50 ◼ ► And, yes, like, the moment it is now with you all the time, it does fundamentally change something.
00:41:01 ◼ ► Like, I think those first few years of the iPhone, they were, like, the peak social media time.
00:41:16 ◼ ► So this is the other part of it is, like, it's the grandest part of a selection effect where it's not just what is the technological level, but who is able to do it.
00:41:25 ◼ ► And so, yeah, in particular, like, those first few years of the existence of the iPhone, who are the people who even have iPhones?
00:41:39 ◼ ► And then, like you said, yes, on average, those people are going to be more like-minded or they have similar interests, again, compared to literally everyone on Earth.
00:41:51 ◼ ► They're going to have, like, slightly more aligned ideas about, like, how should this work?
00:41:57 ◼ ► But, yeah, as time goes on and then you get to the place where it is literally everyone on Earth is connected with these devices, you should expect that this becomes a significantly more fractious environment than it does when it's 2008 and the iPhone is, like, available in limited places and is very expensive.
00:42:20 ◼ ► Seems obvious in retrospect, but also just, like, is not a thing that it seems like you ever hear anyone of the time commenting on.
00:42:32 ◼ ► You know, why do people say, and I feel like I see this a lot more now, that people say my group chat is what I like and Discord I prefer to Twitter or whatever.
00:42:41 ◼ ► It's like, yeah, because you're finding more like-minded people in smaller groups rather than, like, every opinion that exists in the world.
00:42:54 ◼ ► Like, you're just selecting people down to, like, the small group of people in your group chat or you're selecting them down to who is on this Discord server.
00:43:04 ◼ ► It's just like, oh, when the iPhone first came out, like, there was a natural selection effect.
00:43:10 ◼ ► And now people who are finding ways to try to, like, regain that are having to have an artificial selection effect of, like, putting up artificial boundaries or just fragmenting off into these different groups.
00:43:20 ◼ ► I don't know if I take the wrong lessons from this movie in any way, but, like, there is something that I find exciting in the they're starting something new.
00:43:29 ◼ ► Like, watching Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg, like, they're starting this new thing together.
00:43:48 ◼ ► Like, I really do love that part of the story because I've experienced some of that myself in my life, right?
00:43:54 ◼ ► Obviously, vastly varying outcome, but an outcome in which I consider to be the one I wanted, right?
00:44:06 ◼ ► But, like, I really do like that part of this movie of, like, they have an idea and they work on it together and they make something out of it.
00:44:19 ◼ ► Like, watching a person be successful, like, through their talent is just, like, satisfying to watch.
00:44:32 ◼ ► And, of course, the greater the success of the thing, the more dramatic the start is of, like, oh, they're just there in their room.
00:44:39 ◼ ► And, again, it's like, oh, these funny scenes which hit upon a certain thing where it's like, ah, they're, like, counting individual signups, right, to their website.
00:44:47 ◼ ► It's like, oh, for me, that 100% triggered, like, oh, I remember when I started my YouTube channel, like, you could have an email notification for every time you got a subscriber.
00:45:03 ◼ ► And it's like, there really is a thing of, like, that period of time is the most exciting period of time for the growth of anything.
00:45:10 ◼ ► It's like the initial beginning and that initial acceleration are something that is just irreplicable.
00:45:21 ◼ ► But, yeah, when they're in their dorm counting up to, like, we're going to have 1,000 users, it's like, oh, I felt that very hard.
00:45:28 ◼ ► Like, it's the most exciting period of growth is, like, right at the start because you're thinking, where could this possibly go?
00:45:34 ◼ ► And for Facebook, it went over the whole of the earth, basically, like, the most successful social network ever.
00:45:47 ◼ ► Yeah, also, they have a great line from that, which you're saying about the numbers, is a million dollars isn't cool.
00:46:05 ◼ ► And they're, like, talking about the two cases, the Winklevoss case, the Savarin case, and kind of, like, how it ended.
00:46:11 ◼ ► And then it tries to hit this point home to be, like, today, Facebook is valued at $25 billion.
00:46:27 ◼ ► Where they're trying to make the $25 billion number, right, like, seem like a big thing.
00:46:32 ◼ ► But just, like, when you look at it 15 years on, which I think, what, this movie was released in 2010, it's telling the story of, like, yeah, it's, like, five years on, it's $25 billion, which is incredible.
00:46:54 ◼ ► That feels like the kind of thing you should be able to go back into your movie and just change that number and re-render it.
00:47:03 ◼ ► In order to make it hit, right, because people in the movie are talking about billions, right, they would have to instead say, it's, like, today, Facebook is worth $1,250 billion, right?
00:47:16 ◼ ► Or maybe they get Justin Timberlake back in, and he's, like, actually, you know what's cool?
00:48:27 ◼ ► They have a body double for some of them, and then they digitally put Armie Hammer's face
00:49:18 ◼ ► There are some techniques which are simple, where they're just one guy's just got his back to you.
00:49:39 ◼ ► I genuinely did find, like, oh, the Winklevoss twins are the most compelling character in a way.
00:49:49 ◼ ► And I think the reason that they cast that guy to play both roles is because when I looked up the real Winklevoss twins,
00:50:02 ◼ ► But it's like, oh, they seem like cartoon characters in a way of, like, these Harvard Olympic rower dudes.
00:50:09 ◼ ► But, yeah, the actor just really looks like and has the same kind of physicality as these two guys do.
00:50:19 ◼ ► Oh, while we're talking about performances, because we've spent so much time talking about Jesse Eisenberg,
00:50:48 ◼ ► Again, like, my brain is running the, like, background loop of, like, what really happened in all of these various interactions.
00:50:58 ◼ ► And it's quite easy to be sympathetic with him trying to be the person who, like, makes the company money and ultimately getting screwed out.
00:51:08 ◼ ► I would like to see a movie about them buying Instagram and what that does to Facebook.
00:51:15 ◼ ► I do, but he won't because he's been in the press a lot recently because he just had a big movie last year.
00:51:21 ◼ ► And there are actually a bunch of quotes because it was at the same time that Facebook were changing a bunch of policies.
00:51:26 ◼ ► And, like, Eisenberg is like, I don't like to be associated with him, essentially, is what he's saying.
00:51:34 ◼ ► He's proud of the movie, but, like, he doesn't like to be associated with being Mark Zuckerberg because so many people just, that's Mark Zuckerberg.
00:51:44 ◼ ► I think it's actually more the reverse now where people see Jesse Eisenberg and think of Mark Zuckerberg rather than the other way around.
00:51:55 ◼ ► But I would like to see more of it because I just think Facebook as a company, because of how big it is and how prevalent it is, there's a lot of other stories in there.
00:52:05 ◼ ► Like, I think it would be interesting because I would prefer to watch a bunch of movies and read a bunch of books.
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00:55:02 ◼ ► Because when I was thinking about this show, I just don't know your answer to this, which is,
00:55:10 ◼ ► It's an interesting time to ask the question, because just recently I felt a little bit of a pull
00:55:19 ◼ ► But essentially, no, like, you know, when you were talking before about, like, the ideal time
00:55:25 ◼ ► of when, like, we had the internet, but it's on computers and it's not actually in your pocket,
00:55:28 ◼ ► or, like, the very early days of the iPhone, two things happened to me over a sequence of years.
00:55:34 ◼ ► And, like, one of the very first things was when I had Twitter on my phone, I really started
00:55:40 ◼ ► to become aware of how much I felt like there was a background process in my brain, which
00:55:50 ◼ ► And it was like, oh, should I post something on Twitter or should I check something on Twitter?
00:55:54 ◼ ► I felt for me and, like, the nature of the work I do, I want to have as few things as I'm
00:55:59 ◼ ► thinking about, but I want to think about, like, the small number of things very intensely.
00:56:03 ◼ ► And recognizing, like, oh, this is a problem, like, this is a constant minor distraction.
00:56:16 ◼ ► particularly with a book like So You've Been Publicly Shamed coming out, it's like just
00:56:21 ◼ ► realizing, like, participating in social media is kind of like you're playing a game of roulette.
00:56:27 ◼ ► There might be 10,000 chambers in this revolver instead of six, but it does still feel like
00:56:34 ◼ ► you're kind of playing roulette every time you post on the internet because it is almost
00:56:45 ◼ ► And it's like, I have friends and colleagues who's like, I have seen up close, like, they
00:56:53 ◼ ► And then it's like, oh, the next several years of their life are, like, endlessly dealing with,
00:57:03 ◼ ► I think for me, it isn't even innocuousness, sometimes it's just you post something like
00:57:16 ◼ ► Because there's a couple of things I'm thinking of, like, are the craziest examples of, like,
00:57:23 ◼ ► And it's just seeing the nature of that and seeing that, like, up close just really drives
00:57:51 ◼ ► And, like, the difficulty of it is not even, like, it's not the thing that people are making
00:57:56 ◼ ► some kind of intentional decision to be like, I'm going to post something edgy and maybe it'll
00:58:03 ◼ ► The very clear lesson that has been learned is, like, you can be blindsided at any moment
00:58:24 ◼ ► Like, as a content creator, there's a certain kind of calculation because, like, you need
00:58:35 ◼ ► this movie is, like, I think a lesson that a lot of creators have also learned is, like,
00:58:45 ◼ ► And as a content creator, like, we have all seen very many people, like, survive surprisingly
00:58:54 ◼ ► But yes, if you are a normal person living a normal life and then you end up being the center
00:59:00 ◼ ► of this random storm on the internet, that will forever be the most prominent thing that anyone
00:59:11 ◼ ► That's why it's like, I think the thing that people think about with something like this
00:59:15 ◼ ► is, like, oh, public personalities have a kind of risk from participating in social networks
00:59:22 ◼ ► too closely, which is why increasingly over time, like, you see fewer and fewer people do
00:59:31 ◼ ► But then I think if you take someone who being in media in any way or, like, being a personality
00:59:37 ◼ ► is not actually their job, that seems to me, like, 10 times crazier to be participating in
00:59:53 ◼ ► But obviously by, like, the nature of the ratio of these things, that's the vast majority of
01:00:05 ◼ ► And it just feels like you're taking your life into your hands every single time you do
01:00:17 ◼ ► It's like, you make everything you say Google-able to someone who might want to know something
01:00:52 ◼ ► I mean, that's why I was using a word like storm to try to have it in a more general way.
01:01:09 ◼ ► I feel like it was the U.S. introduced a policy of where, like, the border patrol agents can now ask for your social media handles.
01:01:18 ◼ ► Yeah, and without getting into it, it's actually gotten worse, too, but in the last little while.
01:01:38 ◼ ► And then now you are at risk of, like, not even, like, have you said anything that's bad?
01:01:43 ◼ ► The real question is, is the border guard who's looking at your social media going to dislike anything you've posted?
01:02:06 ◼ ► It's just that the border guard is on the other side of whatever issue it is that you posted.
01:02:19 ◼ ► I tried to go with, like, what is the most acceptable thing I can say here that the vast majority of people can agree with, but that we all know that there are people that disagree with.
01:02:31 ◼ ► The thing here is like, oh, this isn't the world that I want to be living in or the world that I foresaw coming.
01:02:39 ◼ ► And it is also why, like, a movie like this, having watched The Social Network, the movie is grim in a bunch of ways, but it still does have that little bit of a feeling of like, oh, a thing is growing and expanding and there's connections.
01:03:06 ◼ ► It's actually considered a good thing, like it seems, by and large, in the context of the movie, because it's never portrayed negatively.
01:03:18 ◼ ► And I was kind of surprised that there basically was, like, no kind of commentary on anything that's negative here once we move past the, like, initial face mash thing.
01:03:28 ◼ ► But it is a thing that's just like, oh, you think back to, like, what must the early days of this have been like and, like, what is the experience for everyone at the time?
01:03:39 ◼ ► Again, it's this feeling to me of, in retrospect, it's inevitable, but it didn't feel that way at the time.
01:03:52 ◼ ► Of, like, the thing that I thought was a great digital tool and a kind of, like, ushering in of the future.
01:04:00 ◼ ► And even what you're saying of, like, watching Facebook grow is, like, I definitely remember having feelings of, like, watching the spread of technology and just, like, watching the, like, continued interconnection of the world and feeling like, boy, won't this just be great?
01:04:16 ◼ ► Like, here we are at the end of history because, like, everything is, like, accelerating upwards.
01:04:21 ◼ ► And as soon as everyone can just, like, talk to each other, I guess we'll resolve our problems because we'll all have read How to Win Friends and Influence People.
01:04:30 ◼ ► And the only kinds of disagreements are disagreements because people don't understand each other.
01:04:38 ◼ ► And it's like, oh, boy, instead, what I thought was this tool that was a kind of universal panacea, again, turned out to be a revolver with a thousand chambers that you, like, play roulette on every time you post.
01:05:15 ◼ ► I'm essentially using them as, like, alternate broadcast services for the content that I have produced for the people who wish to follow me on those platforms.
01:05:25 ◼ ► But even on the consumption end of it, I feel like, for me, the last network to fall was Twitter, where it's like, I wasn't even looking at Twitter, really.
01:05:37 ◼ ► So really, like, my information diet was something more like switching to RSS feeders and trying to follow blogs of interesting people who I liked.
01:05:49 ◼ ► And, like, quite frequently, like, this is the thing where it's like, oh, an interesting discussion is happening on Twitter about thing X.
01:05:55 ◼ ► And so, like, that was my last little, like, how am I getting to this place would be kind of, like, following those links.
01:06:05 ◼ ► But even there, I made a decision to really try to, like, pull back from that and not even, like, click links going to Twitter.
01:06:13 ◼ ► Because, I mean, honestly, part of it was my Twitter wants to show me nothing but a whole bunch of AI news, which I find, like, increasingly depressing, right?
01:06:22 ◼ ► It's figured out, like, what is my kind of doom scrolling and is like, boy, is it ready to be showing me a bunch of stuff about that.
01:06:29 ◼ ► Like, the moment I land there, it does the thing of, like, oh, do you want to just look at, like, the things that we have to recommend for you?
01:06:48 ◼ ► But, yeah, that is my experience with it is, like, even my light interactions with social media are, like, all downside in various ways.
01:07:17 ◼ ► This also just gets to the thing that, like, I feel that the, like, the phones and the internet have done to everyone.
01:07:24 ◼ ► It's just, like, absolutely destroy people's ability to deal with pauses in any way, shape, or form.
01:07:40 ◼ ► It's not just social networks, but social networks are, like, the harbinger of this kind of behavior, of, like, encouraging this in absolutely everyone.
01:08:07 ◼ ► And I think it's because people get, like, constant reinforcement that that is the thing to do.
01:08:12 ◼ ► The answer to that question is it's important to me to have kind of mental free space in life.
01:08:28 ◼ ► But I am very aware of trying to default to something, like, if I'm out somewhere and I'm going to be online,
01:08:35 ◼ ► like, the default thing should be to listen to music so that I can still be thinking about something.
01:08:43 ◼ ► If I'm on a line, the ideal state is I should be, like, listening to music and or listening to a podcast.
01:08:54 ◼ ► And as long-time listeners will know, I have spent an enormous amount of effort to various degrees of success and failure over the years attempting to make my phone as undisruptive as possible.
01:09:06 ◼ ► But I am aware of how, like, oh, in the modern world, that also just means, like, I am, I'm, like, a total nuisance to everyone else in my life because I'm, like, a wild outlier of difficult to contact precisely because of that.
01:09:24 ◼ ► And I think that's why I've always kind of been this way with my phone of trying to keep it at arm's length precisely because of these kinds of things.
01:10:35 ◼ ► So, like, I will just say a thing that I'm doing, but we will talk about it later because
01:11:06 ◼ ► And, like, I just use it differently and think about it differently to how I think about text-based
01:11:11 ◼ ► social media, which I find to be more destructive and it can suck me in more in, like, a way
01:11:20 ◼ ► There are, like, other things that I want to do, but I want to do some experimentation first.
01:11:24 ◼ ► But to come back to social media, I think that for me right now, as a creator, I'm not really
01:11:34 ◼ ► I think in 2025, to succeed in social media, you have to lean into algorithms and the things
01:11:43 ◼ ► that algorithms like, which is very different to what it was 10 years ago or whatever, right?
01:11:49 ◼ ► Where it was more than just about, like, the people that followed you when they cared and
01:11:58 ◼ ► You still need to lean into things that are trends to try and get in front of new people.
01:12:08 ◼ ► So for me at this point, I actually don't think there is much that I can gain out of using social
01:12:16 ◼ ► The most that I gain, which I do still use it for in this way, is, like, the people that
01:12:57 ◼ ► And so, like, I use social media in my work as a way to get opinions from people and, like,
01:13:19 ◼ ► Because what I'm trying to do is, like, I have a minute and I'm just not going to check social media.
01:13:52 ◼ ► Like, in the past two weeks, I have finally read a bunch of tabs I've had opened for about a year on my iPhone.
01:14:31 ◼ ► When you're saying something to get professionally, it's like you're talking about the inputs, right?
01:14:44 ◼ ► For me, it's like, you know, I have a list of people whose opinions that I respect who are still posting stuff.
01:15:12 ◼ ► But, yeah, I kind of see a scenario now where I'm just more likely to just stop using these services.
01:15:27 ◼ ► Like, I feel like I could do things that are a little more beneficial to me, a little more beneficial to my work, more beneficial to my family, even on my phone.
01:15:43 ◼ ► I'm saying, like, if I have 10 minutes with my iPhone, I could do something which is better than keep refreshing a social network.
01:15:57 ◼ ► Like, this is not like I'm standing on this soapbox and, like, encouraging everyone to follow me.
01:16:08 ◼ ► And it's reminding me, like, of the other times in which I've done similar-ish kinds of things, whether it's, you know, like, I left Twitter for a month, like, years and years ago to see what that would be like.
01:16:31 ◼ ► I don't know if I'm spending less time, really, using these services, but it's the times in which I'm doing them.
01:16:57 ◼ ► And, like, I would love to get it to the point of, like, how I check RSS now, which is, like, I check RSS, like, a couple of times a week.
01:17:05 ◼ ► And I would like to maybe get social media to the point where, like, I'm checking it once a day or maybe once every two days and just, like, you know, scan through what's going on and go with it that way.
01:17:18 ◼ ► But, yeah, I will follow up on this work phone, night phone, day phone, personal phone scenario that I've got going on because there is more to it, but it's too new.
01:17:36 ◼ ► But, yeah, I was just smiling when you were saying, like, trying to get it down to, like, every other day.
01:17:42 ◼ ► And the thing from How to Win Friends and Influence People just popped into my head of, like, there's no correspondence that can't wait a few days, right?
01:17:54 ◼ ► And even just your comment about, like, you're not being a professional takesman on social media also just makes me think about, like, why are we in this situation in the first place is a little bit like, well, also just these kinds of environments you should expect over time that they just become more optimized.
01:18:14 ◼ ► People don't think of it this way, but it's like being on any social network is a kind of environment under which there's evolutionary pressure.
01:18:22 ◼ ► And so, like, you rewind the clock back at the start and it's like, oh, people could be successful and popular on social networks and gain an audience without having to be optimized for that task.
01:18:37 ◼ ► But as time goes on, it's like, oh, the people who are optimized for that task, where it's like the thing that they're trying to do is growing an audience on the social network, right?
01:18:52 ◼ ► Those people are going to start slowly outcompeting everybody else who is less optimized in some ways.
01:18:58 ◼ ► Then it does become very quickly the thing to recognize of, like, oh, if I'm not here to do the thing that this environment demands, it also really just changes the incentives in a whole lot of ways.
01:19:11 ◼ ► I think that's also, like, a kind of background for, like, why do you start feeling like you're not here to be a professional takesman because, like, you're competing with all of the people who that is the only thing they're here to do is, like, be seen and, like, grow on the network itself and everything else is secondary.
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01:21:30 ◼ ► It's, like, getting rid of Spark on my personal devices because removing email from my home screen, checking it less, so I just use Apple Mail.
01:21:53 ◼ ► Something has happened which is making me think that, at this point, someone is listening at Apple Mail and helping me out.
01:22:20 ◼ ► The only thing I have said consistently about Apple Mail is the reason I can never use it, like, on all my devices.
01:22:29 ◼ ► On the iPhone, it's easier to deal with, but on bigger screen devices because it just will show you the next email on the column because you always have the preview view open, right?
01:22:52 ◼ ► I saw the categorization come into the Mac version, which I was also very happy about because it's like, oh, yeah, I've always just used mail.
01:22:59 ◼ ► And I was weirdly finding myself often preferring to do email on my phone, which I just feel like is the worst of all possible places to actually try to do email.
01:23:16 ◼ ► And so when I saw it roll out on the Mac, like, you were the first person I thought of.
01:23:21 ◼ ► So what I want to know is this new setting, which is, like, delete or move message action, view next message, or don't select a message.
01:23:39 ◼ ► Just because I've done something to one email doesn't mean I now want to do something to another email until all the emails are gone.
01:24:04 ◼ ► I mean, there was a time, right, where it must have made sense to people that you would do all your email until it was done.
01:24:14 ◼ ► So using the Mac version of Mail now, there's a couple of things that I find to be peculiar.
01:24:22 ◼ ► One, which is the Mac version of the Mail app doesn't group messages like the iOS version does.
01:26:19 ◼ ► But I do feel like I've had that bit of a hostage situation where I've used this for so long.
01:26:25 ◼ ► Because it's like, I do want to make sure I have to hold down three buttons to send an email.
01:26:29 ◼ ► Because it's like, don't want to accidentally send an email that you don't want to send.
01:26:40 ◼ ► Like, I'm looking at the mail user guide on my Mac right now for the keyboard shortcuts.
01:26:56 ◼ ► And then similarly, if you want to forward, well, no, yeah, forward is Shift-Command-F would be fine, right?
01:27:51 ◼ ► Yes, it's like, there are reasons, I'm sure, in ancient historic text of in which you would
01:27:59 ◼ ► I don't think sending the email, which is arguably the most important thing you could do.
01:28:13 ◼ ► It's like, even the little picture is like, oh, there's a path, and you're taking the alternate
01:28:17 ◼ ► And it feels like Alt always comes up of like, oh, you're doing a slightly different version
01:28:50 ◼ ► of like, crazy, inconsistent system, and that is where we do end up with like, Command Shift
01:29:20 ◼ ► If you click once on a message in the list in Mail and then you press Command Return, it
01:29:40 ◼ ► This has got to be some holdover from back when Mail had like the super duper old fashioned
01:30:09 ◼ ► I mean, I do often want to just open up a message in a window, especially when I'm already
01:30:17 ◼ ► So this feels like one of those things where like, as you have actually demonstrated for
01:30:32 ◼ ► But I guess if you've used it for so long, you just obviously have internalized that D means