The Hacker Movie Canon: The Social Network

And there was a lot of stuff about Facebook's history that I didn't know before I went to work there. Because ironically, turns out that nobody outside of Silicon Valley follows Silicon Valley as much as they follow themselves, right? So there was a lot of kind of like internal culture, industry gossip, like all this stuff that matters a lot to the people who are living it. But the rest of the world is like, you know, I think for a really long time couldn't even have like identified like Mark in a in a lineup, right? Like obviously that's not true now, but you know, we're talking about like 20-10, you know, And so the movie came out before I went to Facebook.

I went to Facebook in 2015 and I was there until a month before the 2016 election. And it just, you know, for I think it's another episode to talk about all the reasons why I was just not a good culture fit for Facebook. But I hadn't I hadn't seen the movie before I went there. And then after having worked there, I intentionally did not watch Facebook movies. I was like, I live this shit. I don't need to constantly be triggered by these characters that are, you know, like frighteningly accurate.

And so we just, you know, just really didn't watch any of those those movies. And so watching this not only, you know, a decade after having left the company, but it's well, like 15 years since the movie came out was the world has changed just so much, right? So it's like I was, I was remembering things and kind of, you know, reminded of things while while watching the movie, but also thinking about would I have reacted differently to any aspect of this if I had watched it in 2010 versus 2016 when I left versus now, right.

Because there's, there's a lot of characteristics and personalities in that movie that we see even outside Silicon Valley now. And it just kind of the, the behavior and the decision making is no longer limited to the Tuck Bros. So that that's kind of what I was thinking as like my big take away as I was watching this, this is like I'm feeling a certain way right now, but is this how I would have felt if I'd seen the movie at a different point in my life? Yeah, it's interesting.

I this is probably going to make you want to cry even more, Melanie. But Lindsay, I'm going to guess you. Were you in college when this came out? I was, yeah. Yeah, OK, 2010. Yeah, I'm. Not Yeah, I'm not that sad about it. I graduated College in 2007. OK, well. Grad school I finished grad school in 2007. OK, different story, but this is like and this is also an important point in the movie and in just the connection is that your grad school was BU, which like catches a whole bunch of stray bullets in this movie at the very beginning there's.

There's the Facebook thing, and then there's the Harvard thing. Oh, yeah. There's so much. Yes, yeah. And I, I moved to Massachusetts in 2000. And so I remember like this was a big deal when this movie was being made in Massachusetts, even though like most of it was not shot here. Like almost all, like all the college stuff was shot at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore cause Harvard doesn't let people shoot there anymore. There's some like exterior shots that were in like Medford and Somerville and places like that, but none of the Harvard stuff. But it was a big deal that they were doing this movie here. And it was also the same time that they were shooting The Town with Ben Affleck and a couple of other like big Boston movies. So it was a a huge deal or.

What we all thought that Boston was going to be like a big like movie hub. Yeah, people were like, oh, Boston, like, OK. Because we had two famous actors like slash directors were like, Oh well this is a trend. 2 is a trend for Boston. For sure. But then they like kind of ran out of like Dennis Lehane books to make and they're like, let's just go back to LA or whatever. But I intentionally didn't watch this movie when it came out either 'cause like, I was, you know, I was already covering security for 10 years by the time this came out.

And it had been in the tech world and was just like, I do not need to see this movie, you know, for different reasons. It's also not really, I mean, it's also not really related to security necessarily. In fact, when you mentioned the assignment to me, I was like, this is not a hacker movie. Hacker in the loose, loose sense, yeah. Yes, and apparently in the same loose sense that Mark Zuckerberg's character felt like he was hacking, right. Yes, which they literally say as a line in the movie, which is.

Incredible. He was so proud of himself for opening an unlocked door. So, so proud, Yes, and writing algorithms on a window. But do you, Lynn, do? You. Yeah, yes. Lindsay, do you remember seeing this? Like where did you guys like, was it a, were you waiting for this to come out or were you like, I'll just, I'll go see it whenever I have a chance. I think I saw it in theaters, but like, I wasn't, you know, waiting in lines or anything to see it. But, you know, it's funny 'cause you know, to all of the points that you both had mentioned.

Yeah, I was, you know, I'm, I'm from the Massachusetts area. So like love seeing, you know, that Boston represented in movies. And it's also interesting just from the perspective of that I was in college when this came out and social media platforms while I was in college was were very interesting and unique, let's say. I mean, Facebook was obviously really big, but when you look at like face Mash or whatever that other app was that he had spun out like we had a lot of those different types of like weird, like social media type like services or like applications.

Like we had like something called like a little where you would like, you know, post anonymously about someone you would see on campus or like you, we would have like something called Lulu where you would like rate guys like. So that that aspect of this really resonated with me weirdly, because I was like, people were just inventing all of these very odd social, you know, applications on on campuses. So that was another thing where I, when I watched this movie, I was like, wow, that's really a throwback. And then, you know, also like the cybersecurity angle as well, like, you know, at the time when I watched this, obviously it wasn't in cybersecurity, but looking back and rewatching it again, I was like, huh, they did ACTF like, you know, things like that.

So that was that was kind of interesting. It's it's been really funny to watch it over the years. Yeah, I, I don't think I saw it until it. It might have been during the pandemic, honestly, like when I didn't have anything else to do. Yeah, things were real dark. I was like, well, like I. Went through the entire Netflix catalog and there was nothing left. Yes, literally like reached the end and they were like you got to go back to the beginning. So I'm pretty sure I watched this probably with my kids, honestly.

And just you and I were texting about this yesterday, Melanie, when you when you were watching it and we'll get into your like initial impressions, but I'm, I realized like how allergic I am to Aaron Sorkin's dialogue again while watching this. Like I was never a West Wing person. I've never seen a single episode of that show which is I know a. Crazy. I would say that show was even more triggering for me than this film because I did not see that show until I think it was a year ago.

I went through, like, the whole series. I'd never seen it when it was on TV. Yeah, me neither. And I was like, oh, my God, This is why we got all of these, like, like, political press secretaries working in tech PR right now. Like, these are their role models. And this explains so much of who I used to work for. It's very true the the mannerisms, the patterns of speaking, the way that they save almost nothing but you know, in like 9 different circular ways and talk around everything and.

It's awful, truly awful, and it's so disrespectful to waste people's time like that where it's like, I'm here for a monologue. I'm not really here to convey any information that you need in order to do your job. Yeah, it's were you a West Wing? Did you guys watch that, Linds? I'm sure you must have. Oh, no. OK, no. We we didn't. OK, Yeah. No, I probably. Won't no, I I definitely will not like I I think the only Sorkin movie I really like is Moneyball and that has, you know, probably the yeah, exactly yes.

And this one, I guess is sort of the timing of it is a little weird because there was like a, a treatment for a book about this story being circulated at the same time that the idea for the movie came out. So the book is, or excuse me, the movie is not based on the book. They were almost contemporaneous, the book by Ben Mezrich. But and this is only like the movie came out like four or five years after Facebook became, you know, available to everybody. So it's still very early on in the development of the company, which is kind of a interesting time to make the, the story. And I, I also remember that I hated the framing device of the deposition Cut back to, you know, 2003 for 20 minutes. Now here's more deposition, all that kind of stuff. I loved that part because the depositions kept my interest when like the flashbacks would

bore me. So like the I just find all of these characters to be so unlikable that like the depositions were the entertaining piece for me where I'm like, cool, you're all punching each other in the face. This is well deserved. And so it was like that that part was what like kept my my attention. Whereas like when we would go back and actually watch, you know, these individuals while they think they are, you know, like when they're in the moment and they're, they're not being questioned about what they did. Yeah.

Like they're, they're living through the behavior and they're living through the decisions. That part was far less enjoyable for me to watch. Yeah, the I enjoyed the comeuppance part, I guess I would say. Yes, yeah, I think we all like that because there really aren't almost almost no one in this story is likeable. Like you said, Melanie, like Rashida Jones's character who's extremely minor. You see her in like 3 scenes.

Likeable because she's Rashida Jones, Rooney Mara's character. Also because she's her line at the end. Yeah, like her very last line. I was like that. That was worth. Well, I don't want to say the whole movie was worth that one line, but but I was like, yes, finally somebody who like has has come in from the outside. That's not somebody who has been on the journey with them. Somebody coming from the outside but who now knows like really intimate details about the whole saga and everything is walking away from the whole experience being like, if you're not an asshole, stop being one. Yeah, stop trying to right, Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, yes, I'm paraphrasing because she's like, you're not an asshole, but you're trying really hard to be 1, which is essentially being like you are one because that's what you're doing.

Yeah, cut it out. But if, if you're really not, then then stop. And of course, I don't know if she ever really said that in real life. If she did, he obviously did not heed her advice. But yeah, like, that was I, I, I enjoyed that character, I think in part because because she did have all of the same information as everybody else and just was not starstruck. And I appreciated that because I find all of these people to be incredibly not impressive. Yeah, yeah.

Even Eduardo though it's, which is funny because Eduardo, I, I went and looked him up after and he, I mean, he's done pretty well for himself, I would say like the, the person. They also have but it, but I mean like the this again, like like Dennis said, this is about like really, really early Facebook and made during early Facebook, right? It's it's not really retrospective like long term, right? And the way that Mark treated Eduardo, who was supposedly his best friend, he tells lots of people that this is his best friend.

I'm like, cool, that is how you treated your best friend. And the rest of us should not have expected anything differently. Yeah. Yeah, he was. He was so mean to him. It's the old, you know, line of when people show you who they are, believe them. And you, you know, speaking about the character in the movie Mark Zuckerberg, he shows people several different times that he's not a good person and only has his own interests at heart, You know, in many different ways and in many, many different situations.

But people sort of keep coming back to him. At least Eduardo does several different times and being like, well, I'll give you another $18,000 or OK, I'll come out to Palo Alto and see how things are going or whatever. And you know, it always comes back to bite him in the ass 'cause you know, that character is very driven, you know, driven by things in the movie that are kind of goofy. Like they come back to this finals club thing like 50 different times of like, well, I'm sorry you didn't get into the Phoenix club or the Purcellian or whatever because you're not blue blood. And that's like what, you know, we're supposed to believe motivated him to screw his best friend out of all this kind of stuff and like get pissed off at the the Winklevoss twins and all that kind of stuff.

But you know, that's, that's movie bullshit in a lot of ways. But it's also like, I guess somewhat there's some kernel of truth to that. But it also reminds me of how many times have I heard from like men in tech, like when something comes out about like this guy who's in power, turns out he abused his power, did something like super terrible to somebody and all his friends were like, they act so shocked and surprised. Like how could we have seen this coming? It like, I don't know if they are just completely oblivious to all of the red flags that those of us who haven't had those levels of privilege, like we kind of had to negotiate and kind of navigate all of these different areas. We're so sensitive to those red flags. And then, you know, I, I hear from like my male friends and peers who they're like this guy was like, of course that guy like open your eyes.

Like this is not a surprise, right? And so it kind of I think has remnants of that of being like, I think a lot of times when people are getting a, a personal benefit or gaining something by looking the other way, it's really easy for them to do that. Right. And then at at the end, he seemed so surprised where to your point, you know, the the character of of Mark had been showing him all along who he really was. But, you know, so many people are like, well, they would never treat me that way, You know? Well, if they're going to do it to somebody, they could do it to anybody.

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. I I read somewhere that David Fincher versus Aaron Sorkin, they both had like different views on Mark Zuckerberg and how they wanted to portray him. And I forget who would want wanted to have more of like the, you know, like emotional, like background, like sympathetic spin versus more of he was an asshole. But like, I think that really comes through pretty well in the film.

I'm, I'm curious in the, the next upcoming film that they do, if that's going to be, you know, how that's going to be with only Sorkin on board now. I guess so like, but you know, I thought that was one of the the the things in in the film that they tried to portray this like walking this fine line, even though he did come off as an asshole ultimately. Oh, in the movie for sure, yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that's interesting because like both the the movie characters and those from in real life who who I've actually met, like not all of them, just some of them.

And I don't know any of them. Well, just to be clear, it's not dissimilar from a lot of personalities that we saw in Silicon Valley at that time. Remember when there was like that whole trope of like, oh, the poor misunderstood software engineer who doesn't have any social skills, right, OK, that is cool. Or I shouldn't say cool, but I'm, I'm using cool in terms of like excusable, understandable, can have 54 until the age of like 15, right?

And, and a lot of these personalities, you can understand how they started that way, but then when they became an adult and when they started these companies or joined these companies, they got a lot of reward for behaving this way. They were incentivized and rewarded for it. And so they never grew out of it. And so it is difficult, I think, to say that like I could, I would have no empathy for somebody, you know, who's a sophomore in college away from home for the first time and is struggling with other humans. But but if that is still your personality when you are in your 40s.

And to be fair, some of the characters in this movie were already in their well into their adulthood and they were giving advice and mentoring and you know, where it's like the, the behaviour was rewarded. And so it, it's hard to have empathy for them at this stage in their life, right? Because this is, you've had a lot of time away from your parents and away from your childhood to, to, to learn new skills if you wanted to, right? It's.

If you wanted to, it's the key phrase there, yeah. The willingness to understand other people rather than sitting back and assuming that everyone needs to come understand you first, right. And, and that's kind of how these personalities were. I mean, when, when I started in Silicon Valley, probably right after this movie was made, most of the engineers that I worked with were in that awkward stage of their career where they're, they were brilliant in school and now they have to work with the team.

And nobody likes a group project like an engineer, right? But most, most of them developed their skills. These are teachable skills. And most of them became very empathetic. And I, it was one of the things I think that drew me into the security field was that the engineers that I met in this space were some of the most passionate, empathetic and human centric engineers that I had ever worked with because they had gone through the experience of this is what happens if we don't center people in our work, right? So it is just a choice to be that way, right? Yeah, and that's very clearly.

Well, they sort of talk around it a little bit in the movie. They don't really get into that empathy versus like egotism so closely in the movie. It's, it's more portrayed in sort of like implicitly rather than explicitly. Like you'll just see them being so focused on their, you know, coding at at first or then finding a way to make money later on in the movie or then like finding a way to screw their friends out of the money and, you know, in the.

Third act. I mean, I think, I think there's a really stark difference between the way he treats Erica in that beginning scene, which is, I mean, deplorable to say the least, right? But he seems genuinely shocked that she's not into this, right? And, and, and by the end of the movie, when he screws over Eduardo, he clearly did it on purpose. That is not a socially awkward kind of situation, right? That like he did it too hurt him and and it so that juxtaposition was interesting to me in terms of like, there's for all of the empathy that you want to muster for the I'm just not getting social clues and I don't understand why women are not into this like misogynist attitude. And then but it's, it's not as if you can paint all of his decisions with that brush.

There were definitely times where he's like, this is going to hurt the person. And that's exactly why I'm doing it. Oh, yeah, no question. And towards the end where there's the whole thing with the Sean Parker character, Justin Timberlake's character, where they sort of like the Zuckerberg character, sort of offload some of his guilt for those decisions onto the Sean Parker thing. You know, they, they sort of let him be the like explicit villain, like telling Eduardo, sorry, you're screwed.

We're, you know, security's going to walk you out. How how is Silicon Valley was the Sean Parker character's like back story and explanation for like every single thing where it's like he has to tell you about this company that was started 20 years ago and then these people do it like he couldn't just answer the question. He couldn't have just said you recognize my date because she's a Victoria's Secret model. No, he had to give you the whole I'm like, just so Silicon Valley to think that anybody is interested in the back story. Yes, it's so true.

Yeah. And you know, Lindsay, we've sat in like hundreds of briefings over the years with those kind of people. And I know you have to, Melanie, where you're just like I did. I don't care who you know or how like any of this, just get to the point man Like this. Is a big part of like media training with these kinds of folks is I'm like, like even in back when I used to do media training, I had like this slide that was just like a fire hose. And I'm like, this is what it feels like when you talk about the things people don't care about.

Like we need to distill what you actually have to share to something that people will care about so that they remember it, so that they repeat it. And if their main take away from this conversation is that you talk a lot, you talk a lot about yourself, and you said a whole bunch of shit that no one cared about, we're not going to get the outcome that you're looking for. Yeah, it's so true. Yeah. It's, it's hilarious to me that for, for a, for a profession that, you know, claims to, to understand reverse engineering, they cannot do it in a human context, no. The opening scene that you mentioned, Melanie, and this is one of the the few scenes in this movie that I really love, is that opening scene at the Thirsty Scholar Pub where it's just Zuckerberg and the Erica

Albright character, who I I think is a composite. I don't think that's a real character from everything I read. But they're just having like a sort of a benign conversation. And he's telling her that there's more people with genius Iqs in China than there are in the entire United States or whatever, some nonsensical fact. And she's like trying to, you know, slowly get to the point of like, this is not working for me. Like we, we need to break up. And at some point he says, wait, is this real? And she's like, yes.

And he's like, oh, then I apologize. Like the, that was the only way that he could like he could not recognize any of the human emotions coming from her until she said, yes, this is real. I'm done with you. And he's like, oh, in that case, I apologize. Everything's fine, right? I have had this conversation. With. So many tech executives where I'm having to explain to them that the way people feel and the feedback that they're getting and the backlash that they're experiencing is in fact real. And only then are they like, oh, so I should apologize as if it's like the logical neck.

Like there was no empathy in that apology. It was a like. What is the fail safe for this behavior? And it was just a way to move to the next part of the from whatever we wanted to, yeah. Yeah, that is correct. And the thing that I found interesting, and I don't know if I'm interpreting like Erica's perception correctly. This is just the the way that I was reading it. I don't think she sat down in that pub planning to break up with her. No. He convinced her of it. As he was talking, she. He talked her into breaking up with it, yes. Yeah.

Like there's like this moment where it's like the the look in her eye changes and she's like, I can't do this anymore. This is just absolutely insane. Yeah. It's. What does she say she's like? Dating you is like dating a trend. A Stairmaster. It's. Like, yeah. Yeah, which is it's, she gets like that character gets like 5 or six of the best lines in the movie and she's only in I think 3 total scenes or maybe 2, you know, that scene. And then later on where he runs into her at the restaurant, you know, sort of after everything is launched and she tells him off again, which is great.

But the the end of that first interaction where I forget the exact wording, but she essentially says, you know, you're going to go to, you're going to go to your grave thinking that people don't like you for whatever reason. And I'm here to tell you it's because you're an asshole. It's not because they're jealous of you or whatever, you know, I feel. Like this statement is made in so many Facebook exit interviews. Like at least when I was there, the company had a very difficult time understanding truly why people didn't like them.

And obviously, like I said, it's been like a decade since I was there different people now, but it, it was just such a huge part of my early career working with people being like, they just do not see reality the same. And they feel entitled to define what reality should be for everybody else. Right? That, you know, there were times during my time there where I felt like, am I really being asked to convince people that the sky is purple when it is clearly not? Is that really the assignment?

And sometimes that really was the assignment. And and so we think, you know, that, that look that Erica gets on her face where she's like, Nope, Nope. This is the I remember that day for me at Facebook. I remember it clearly. I think we've we've all had that whether it's, you know, with a, you know, a partner or like a yeah, a company or something else, something in your life where you're just like, well, that's that like, so yeah, like can't you know, Yeah, you. You you can't fix no things that don't want to be fixed that's. The irony of what you're describing too is, you know, this is all about a social media platform. Like this is like how people are making digital connections, how they're interacting online.

And like, you know, the the fact that this movie depicts the creators and the people who are making those policies as people who are incredibly anti social, who don't miss or like have those kind of cues as just like so fascinating to me. I mean, it was, no, I want to recognize that this was like a dramatized film, right? These are not exact words that people said, but the concept of creating a social network that was never really about any of the other people.

It was just, how can we make it easier for you to get information about other people without having to engage with them or, or ask them the question or, you know, ask permission or consent or any of these things, right? It was so much of the decision was about how can I, as like the main character in my own story, gather as much information as I can without having to let other people know that that's what I'm doing. Yeah, I mean, there's, you know, it started out as like a sort of a clone of like Hot or not or something like that in a, you know, called Face Mash or face I think face Mash. And yeah, it was there was no like grand plan behind it, as you said, Melanie.

It was like, how do we you know, there? There's there's a pretty good even as much as I hate narration and voice over, there's a pretty good montage scene towards the beginning where right after Mark leaves that bar kind of runs back to his dorm and starts like live blogging how Maddie is at at this Erica character and also like starting to get the proto version of the Facebook by stealing all these photos from the various. Residents.

So we had Twitter by then, so the fact that he was blogging it is hilarious to me. That's a good point. Yeah, Live Journal. That was one of the like, I took a screenshot of it. It's like, and I think the name of his live journal was like Zuck on it. I was like, this is just the most, you know, 2003 shit ever. But but he he gets he. Gets stuck in that there is not a whole bunch of like maturing posts.

Oh, close to this film. Certainly not in the, well, certainly not in the movie. Like there's no maturing whatsoever. I think maybe in the Eduardo character, you know, 'cause it especially once by the time he shows up at the house in Palo Alto and like sees all the chaos that's going on there. He's like, obviously he's getting screwed in the business sense, but he just looks around. He's like, he's the same age as these people. He's like, these are children, Like what? What are they doing? Like this is a business and they're, you know, jumping off the roof into the pool and like, whatever. I think there is often a misunderstanding that as some of these individuals become more savvy at curating a public persona, that there is maturing happening in the background. Oh.

Like no, it is a lot of stunted growth and the fact that you now have a team of people who can like, airbrush things for you does not mean that you have significantly changed as a person in terms of security. Not at all, no. In fact, I think, I mean, that's one of the things that Rashida Jones's character says in that very last scene is something along the lines of, look, just apologize and pay him off.

It's a speeding ticket in the, in the grand scheme of things, you know, And then she says, you know, the, you're not an asshole, you're just trying to be one or something like that, which, you know, is all a very depressing but accurate depiction, you know, summation of all of that. Like, just give the guy the money. It doesn't matter. You're going to make 8 gazillion more dollars in the next 10 years. Yeah, I mean, I think that I mean we talked about how much we we like that closing statement from from her character, but hypothetically speaking, the very next day when you wake up and make the same decision, you'd now have become the asshole, right. Like you only get, I don't want to say excuse because I don't think any of it is excusable, but like you get to a certain point where you're you're not pretending this is in fact who you are.

Yeah, it's true. Yeah. If you're if you're doing it over and over that you know at some point you are what you do. Yeah, 100%. Like what? What else are you? Yeah. Yeah. If you think and do different things, which one are you? The one that lives in your head or the one that lives in the world? I know, I feel like we see that too with Justin Timberlake's character as well, where like he's just like paranoid and just people are out to get him.

And I think that's fine. And I didn't realize this, but I guess Jonah Hill was like up for that role too. Which is? Hilarious. Although I will say just based on my experience, I don't think Sean's character I, I don't know Sean in real life. I don't know how everyone felt about any of this, but at least the things that his character said in the film I don't think was paranoid. That shit really does happen and so. I had the same reaction. Yeah, I was like that. Very accurate of what happens.

Yeah. I don't. I don't. And and it just the whole thing again, just like it's. And the the reason why I think it's particularly interesting in Sean's case is because it was, it was very early tech startup culture, right? But he was not fighting other tech people. He was fighting a legacy industry, right? And to the, a lot of this stuff that I think got exposed through tech because tech was the industry going through this at the time where all of the technology and media channels and everything came online to expose a lot of this behavior.

But clearly this was existing in the music industry previously, right? The executives in the music industry felt like this was OK. I think we, we have all studied enough U.S. history to understand that like oil and railroad executives also felt like this was acceptable behavior. Like it just, it was not limited to, to Silicon Valley in tech, but we know about a lot more of it because of all of the the other things that we're coalescing it at the same time. And it's just, I think really sad that we can't seem to break this cycle regardless of what business we're in. Yeah.

Well, the other thing is the the Sean Parker character in the movie, you know, they, they explain sort of his Napster back story that he was one of the the founders of Napster along with Sean Fanning. There's an interesting security connection there. Both of those people in real life were members of the Woo Woo hacking crew. Sean Fanning, I think more than Sean Parker actually. But the character, the Sean Parker character in the movie, Justin Timberlake seems to have learned all of the wrong lessons from his Napster failures. You know, like in that the first meeting between Sean Parker and Eduardo and Zuckerberg with the Christie character. When they're at the restaurant.

The sushi restaurant. And, you know, he's explaining like, oh, you know, we took down the record industry or something and Eduardo's like, did you really? Did you did you win? Because I think you went bankrupt. And you know, Timberlake is like, oh, do you want to buy a Tower Records, like very cockily saying, you know, oh, we we actually did. But the heat it like that did not end well, you know, but the character is like, oh, I won. I'm still I'm still at it. I'm out here, you know, like I'm, I'm doing the thing and you're just like. God, that is like this is like giving me Deja vu of like so many conversations that I had with the executives during my time.

Like the definition of success was just so it, we, there was a lot of misalignment. I would say what success looked like. And so like, I mean, I, I, after I left Facebook, I went to Uber. So I mean, like there's like, and I, I joined Uber. It was just under a year before Travis left. And so it was the same kind of personality types, right? The same kind of traits of like, we want to disrupt something. We like our mark on the world is to just break something. I mean, my little company that I started five years ago was more profitable than Uber until just recently, right? So it's like, did you really win? Like if it takes 20 years for your company to turn a profit, is that winning?

I mean, is it? And but maybe it is for, for the people who made a lot of money, but a lot of people didn't. And there, there was a lot of, I think unnecessary damage in the process and the, the, the methods of, of some of these companies. And so this idea of I'm winning because I beat some opponent who didn't even realize they were in the fight. Yes, some imaginary It's just.

It's just this and it reminds me so much, even like as we've seen a lot of these executives get involved directly with each other on social media where I'm like, stop trying to win this conversation. Like winning the conversation is not the point, right? And and the person who has the last laugh in the conversation may not actually be the winner. You may actually end up looking the most foolish because you're the one that kept going to it. Just yeah.

This whole concept of like what winning actually means is often different for a lot of these folks. And it's interesting because what they consider to be winning may not be what their shareholders consider to be winning, which may not be what their employees consider to be winning or their customers. And, and so the fact that there's misalignment on what the goals are isn't issue #1 but then getting them to articulate, like, if, if you actually had like a corporate communications team that was structured to accomplish the personal winning goal of an executive, I mean, we, we would have made very different decisions.

And you know, there, there were times where we would placate the executive with, OK, here's the shining object that you think is a trophy because we're thinking long term over here, right? So, yeah, there's just, there's a lot of things in these personalities that like This is why that's when you told me this was the movie we were watching. I was like, oh God, this is I'm gonna have to call my therapist after this. Like, there's because these these are trends that carry.

They weren't specific honestly, to to Zuckerberg. They weren't specific to Facebook. They're they, they exist in so many companies, so many organizations. And it's just this whole culture of, you know, when once you become whatever your definition of success is, you think you did it by yourself. Yeah. Oh, that's entirely accurate, yeah. Like who? I can't remember which character it was that was like if your friends want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves taller. That was Zuckerberg talking about the the Winklevoss twins. If your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall and I was like, first of all, those guys are both like 6 two.

I think they say it in the movie like I'm 62250 and there's. Two of. Me. Yes. Armie Hammer. Objectively tall. Yeah. Which, you know, we haven't really even talked about that whole aspect of it, like the the lawsuit framing of this. We talked about the deposition part, but like the whole day. Oh, go ahead. No, I was just going to say like the whole bit about these two, you know, extremely handsome twins from an extremely privileged background being aggrieved and we're, you know, because they, you know, somebody stole their idea or whatever is always very funny to me when I see this. Like obviously they had a legitimate case like it. They got a whole bunch of money out of this. But us like them playing the victims throughout the movie is really funny every time to me.

You just like them sitting around in their dorm room like they're talking shit about us in the Harvard Crimson. And it's like the most like, privileged, like jerk behavior. It's just, you know. And I, I enjoyed the the scene where they're talking to the, is it the university president or? The oh, Larry Summers, Yes, the the president of the former Treasury Secretary, as he reminds them. And to your point, they're going on playing the victim. And he's like, how did you get this meeting again?

And his assistant is like, oh, their dad knows a guy. And he's like, yeah, exactly. Like, like where where is, where is the, the harm here to your like privileged status, Right. But yeah. And I, I agree with you. I was obviously they had, they had legal footing, you know, for their case. But also it was, I was like, what was I doing as a sophomore in undergrad like? Not that not. Calling lawyers? No. Oh my God, no.

Yeah, we're like, they went after the, what was it? They were at like a rowing competition and they were at like the reception after and just like casually bumping shoulders with like, like super famous people. And we're just like. Just moving around. Like, yeah, Prince. Yes, yeah. That's the level of, you know, victim we're dealing with there. And not only that, but they were pissed by what the people were saying. How dare the Prince tell me better luck next time. Yes.

Oh, the race was so close. Good job, boys. Like little pat on the head. They were so mad about that. Yeah, there was, I did read like a a quote from the actual Larry Summers who recalled that that meeting with these guys like pretty clearly. He said one of the things you learn as a college president is if if an undergrad is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at 3:00, there are two possibilities. 1 is that they're looking for a job and have an interview. The other is that they're an asshole. This was the latter case.

Rarely have I encountered such swagger. And I tried to respond in kind. I mean it's. Amazing. The president of Harvard is saying that you're too arrogant. You've got you've got a problem that's. Hilarious. In the movie, he was like, yeah. He he dismissed him pretty hard. He yeah, it was, it was good, but. Well, the, the other thing, not, not to get like too like macro about it, but I mean, they, they did have a legitimate case in terms of the, the IP, but like a lot of people had their ideas stolen by like, like not everybody in the United States has this kind of recourse, right?

So it's like we still have a system that is like privileging the already privileged. Like think about, for example, like how many ideas like Facebook stole since this time period, right? Some, sometimes they legitimately bought competitors. Other times they just stole ideas and you know, it was just. Like this is what America is. Not really set up to like the normal, the average person would not be able to just like file a lawsuit like this and pay attorneys fees in order to, you know, get this kind of compensation. No, absolutely not.

I mean, you described earlier, Lindsay, like how many different sort of semi versions of this idea you saw while you were in college, You know, obviously like after Facebook, but in that same kind of time period like, oh, it's Facebook, but this or it's Facebook, but this a little bit different, like almost like Uber for ABC or D, which, you know, we've seen a million of two. Why people said that? I was like, OK, so that just means that you're not profitable and you're incredibly disliked. Offloading your work to other people. Got it.

Yeah, yeah. Fighting labor laws, not wanting to give people like, adequate compensation and benefits. Yeah, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, it's it's what's interesting too, is that the issues in this movie are so different from the issues that Facebook dealt with in the decade after. This was well, I guess 2 decades after. I mean, yeah, you look at some of the main points of conflict in the movie and it's like, you know, who owns what or like, you know, all these other different things like how do they drive revenue and all these, you know.

But now looking back at knowing what we know, like Cambridge Analytica, like all the, you know, the Facebook files, like all everything that's kind of come out over the past few years, it's just really weird re watching this with that kind of new context in mind. Yeah, I mean, the, the cute little disagreement between the Eduardo character and Zuckerberg's character about buying, selling ads as a point of contention is hilarious. You know, 'cause Zuckerberg's character is like, look, the Facebook is cool.

If we start putting up, pop up ads for Mountain Dew, it's not going to be cool anymore. Which is just when you think about, you know, probably within a year of that statement being made. Like it's, I mean, it's an ad platform. It's a brilliant, perfectly designed ad platform. But at that point, it wasn't, you know, it was allegedly a social network. But that sort of that being a bone of contention between the two founders of like, well, how are we going to monetize this by selling ads? No way.

That's not cool. We can't. OK Like, obviously that was always going to happen, but it's just, you know, that's, again, I think some movie nonsense. But yeah, it's given what's happened in the last 15 years since the movie came out, it's it's very cute. And there's AI think the, you know, the title card at the end gives you a little bit of information about like, oh, there was a settlement paid to the Winklevoss twins and to Eduardo. And then it says that Facebook, and this is 2010, was valued at what was it?

It was like $25 billion or something at the time that the movie came out, which is, yes, $25 million. I looked it up yesterday. Meta as a whole is valued at 1.6 trillion right now. Obviously that includes things besides Facebook itself, but the difference between $25 billion and 1.6 trillion is like, I can't even calculate, you know, that kind of math is just, it's mind boggling.

So yeah, it's, it's kind of a wild thing. But Lindsay, how much do you remember? Like, was Facebook like a huge deal when you were in college? Like, did people care about it? Like, did you use it all the time to be like, oh, where are my friends going tonight? Or like, what are people up to? Yeah, Yeah. I would say the biggest thing we used it for was, yeah, everyone would take their, you know, digital cameras out to parties and take million photos and then upload it into albums.

And you'd spend like the next day, like, you know, looking through the pictures and all that, which is absolutely hilarious because it's so different now. Like, you know, I would say Facebook and how it's used now is like more of like a, well, maybe it's just my my own age right now, but like, check your town, like local town, like see what's going on or like seeing these random posts that really aren't having anything to do with your friends.

So, yeah, I think it it was pretty heavily used in the way that they described it in the film. And like, we also came from, you know, I was coming from, you know, growing up with Myspace and some of these other platforms they also talked about which, you know, the irony a little bit. Yeah, exactly. Like, But like the irony in the movie of them being like, Facebook is so exclusive and that's going to be like the hook. And then, oh, no, we're going to expand it like to all these other colleges.

And now, like internationally, like by the end of the movie, it just like had floated over. So. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I would say like the the way they were using it and the way they intended to use it in the movie, it was like definitely resonated with me in, in terms of how I grew up using it, at least in college. Yeah, I mean, they they talk about, I've never had a Facebook account. I'm very proud to say that. But it was like it didn't it obviously not when I was in college. But the way that they talk about it when they decide to expand from Harvard to I think they they talk about like Yale and Columbia and then Stanford after that or whatever. All these like very high end exclusive schools, of course, very quickly as a way to like gain members. But they still wanted to keep it as like an exclusive thing, almost like, yes, we'll expand it, but we're not going to certainly not going to give it to like state colleges or anything like that.

Like we're not going to give it to, you know, UMass or something like that. God forbid, you know, it's still got to be the, you know, the, the blue bloods. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, it's not like it's what's funny too is how people use social media now and how different that is. Like, and I know Instagram is, is funny because I think people are becoming or have become a lot more aware of like how they want to keep their lives private. And there's a little bit of like holding your pictures to your chest a little bit like trying like not revealing too much or like, yeah, there's just a lot of differences now between how people use social media and the focus on likes, the focus on trying to get followers.

It's just all so different. Yeah, I think people went very quickly from like, put everything on there. And then within a few years people were like, wait a second, I shouldn't be putting anything on here, especially like pictures of my kids or shit like that. You know, I I can remember when, like, our kids were young or my sister's kids were young and I was like, no, no pictures whatsoever going on. Like we're not doing that.

So. Yeah. Yeah, I know it's and now. And now like with TikTok and everything else, you know, kind of see how things continue to change. So yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Anyway, we, I think you mentioned towards the beginning, Lance, that there's a sequel in the works for this and Sorkin is the one. Sorkin is apparently writing it, but Fincher is not directing it, so I don't know who the director is. I'm not sure if they've even gotten one signed on, but I don't know if I'm going to be super eager to see it. It seems like it's going to focus on some of the election issues if I read the descriptions right. That does not hold a lot of appeal to me, honestly. Yeah, I'd be curious how many

people go see that one because, yeah, it's about like apparently about the Facebook files, which were this whistleblower came out and talked about how Facebook was prioritizing like profit over, you know, the internal knowledge that its platform was harmful for teens or for politics and or even just like political violence in some cases, disinformation. So I just, I think I agree with you, Dennis.

Like that just hits a little close to home right now. It. Does, yeah. I don't think it's going to have the same feel or mood that the social network had so. No. We'll see. No, I don't think so. And. They didn't get Jesse Eisenberg back either. Right. I think I saw maybe it was you that told me it was going to be Jeremy Strong as. Zuckerberg, which is hilarious.

Yeah, yeah. He, I'm not the biggest fan of his, so I don't know. I'm not a huge Eisenberg fan either. So I don't, you know, one way or the other, I think people. Fit the part pretty well. Yeah, it's true. I mean, Eisenberg did a great job. I mean, you can't. Like it's hard to imagine. The social network with anyone else playing him, honestly, you know, it's one of those parts where you like I, I can't really picture another actor doing it, but yeah, I guess we'll see. Yeah, yeah, I yeah.

I don't know if that's what I'm going to see, so no. I won't be standing in line as you said, that's for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's like, I think part of it is that the new cycle these days moves so quickly that it feels like this has been, it was so long ago. Like I'm, I'm more interested in like documentaries now rather than the, the dramatisations because I'm like the, the gossipy salacious piece of it. Like it had its 15 minutes and like I'm over it, you know, like I'm in the facts.

I'm interested in, you know, of course, anything that is, you know, being revealed for the first time because I, I do believe wholeheartedly that we need to learn from our mistakes and that people should be held accountable for decisions when they knew better. But, you know, collectively, as a society, we deserve to know the truth. But that's not necessarily what you get from these dramatized versions of history, right? Yeah. I mean, it's, yeah, it's important to remember, even though these are very accurate or very, you know, forceful portrayals of real people, that this was a fictionalization.

You know, these are it's there's dramatic license taken. They, you know, leave things out. They play other things up to move the story along. You know, and if you, if you look at any of the contemporaneous writing about the production of the movie and Sorkin's writing in the script, like they're very open about that. Obviously they're like, I mean, like we pick the things that are dramatic to make a movie, you know? When you have Sorkin writing your script, it's not about like precise accuracy.

No, it's about it's about like 800 words per minute of dialogue in your face for two. Hours. Yes, about, about something that should have taken you about 90 seconds to communicate, which means everything beyond that was like, like manufactured, right. Yeah, movie bullshit, yes, but you know, some entertaining. Yeah. I mean, I, I think, I think the thing that might potentially have more interest in my mind on, on the new movie compared to the previous ones is that because of Facebook's size and influence at this point, it's hard to have a conversation about U.S. history or US politics or even global history at this point, right, Without having a conversation with them, which, like we mentioned earlier, like people have different definitions of winning.

I think there are a lot of people in, in Facebook's leadership over the years who would consider that a win that they're, that they got a page in all of these history books. I question whether or not the like net sentiment of that page should be considered a win or not. But, but, but I am particularly interested in how all these things do connect together. And they, I do think the fact that this, this is not going to be a, a movie that's just about a company, because Facebook passed that point a long time ago. There's going to be a movie about their role in a much bigger story.

And in that sense, for me, it, it has more appeal because it's, it's a way to understand a bigger picture than, you know, like who actually had the idea first, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that that brings to mind, I'm totally blinky on the name of that movie, but the one that came out recently about four tech executives who kind of bunker up in a oh. God, oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like at the world is burning outside because of, you know, misinformation and just the platforms that they've created.

But yeah, this your. That even though it's like extreme satire and spoof is like some of that is so accurate. Like the way that those four dudes act and the way that they just talk about like how to profit off the end of the world is incredible. It's just. And they also end up turning on each other by kind of the I mean, maybe this is like a spoiler alert, but.

Yeah, sorry, like. They're they're not all friends at the end, right? 4 Masters of the universe try to kill each other. Yeah, and it's and it's interesting because it's like the things, the things that bring them together. I'm sorry, now we've liked movie hub to a completely different film, but the the things that they bring them together, I I'm not sure that it's like bonding as much as it's I have found a new game to compete in and I don't want to get out of the game, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I care about these people or that I even like them. Oh no, like they spend half of the movie a movie that I absolutely hated.

They spend half of the movie comparing their net worths. Like there's a whole like, celebration thing in the middle of the movie when one of them passes the other for some reason. I can't even remember what the circumstances were, but it's just yeah can. You Can you imagine like going away for and with friends and just being like competing with each other the entire time? No, the last thing that my friends and I talk about when we go away for like a golf weekend is work. Like no. Or certainly not our net worth.

Good Lord, no. It's the most depressing. And yet there there's and yet they have FOMO about not being invited or not being there and into like, you know, we we all have our own kind of psychological demons, I guess that that we struggle with, right? Like some of us are addicted to these men's products and some of these men are addicted to each other. Yeah, well, boys never grow up. I think that's the lesson from all of this. The.

Take away, I mean in All in all fairness, I feel like the boys have had a sufficiently long run at being in charge of things. Couldn't agree more. We have seen how how things are playing out. Yeah. How's that working out? Like the literal thing that all security people say to somebody is how's that working out for you? Like, what's the outcome? Yeah, not good. Yeah, not great. Let's try something else. But, you know, again, it depends on what your definition of success is. That's true. Yeah, you're exactly right, Mel.

All right. Well, Melanie, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. I'm sorry to have made you watch this movie. I think I'm sure you'll never. Watch. It was helpful. It was helpful that it was before my time. It was not about any conversations I had to hear in real life. Right, I checked that before I texted you I I wanted to make sure that it was before your time. The the the Uber stuff is hits a little bit differently when you're like, I was in the room for that.

This is not what happened. Right. Yeah. Oh, I can imagine if there was a, a version of this for the for when you were an Uber, it would be a whole different ball of wax. Yeah. Yeah, I probably would not have said yes. No, I know you wouldn't have. Yeah. Yeah. Well, next time we'll have you on for a fun movie. How about that? OK, what? What do the fun movies? I don't know. You can. You can pick any kind of, you can tell that our definition of hacker movie is very loose.

So you can, as long as we're not talking about like Runaway Bride or you know who. Do you think I am Dennis? I know who you are. It's not that. And how old do you think I am? Not that old, That's for. Sure, I'll send you, I'll send you. I'll send you some some suggestions for consideration. Sounds great. We'll let you pick the next one. Sounds good. Excellent. All right, for for their record, my my favorite Tucky movie is Tron Legacy. Oh, what?

That came out the same year as this? Did you know that? OK, but this is what I was watching instead. OK, so I looked up like the box office numbers Tron legacy way ahead of this movie. So that should make you feel good. Oh, shocking. Yeah, yes, but so was like Prince of Persia and Toy Story 3 and Iron Man 2 and all kinds of. Others OK, but the Toy Story franchise is in fact very valuable. It rules. Yeah, I completely agree. OK, Tron legacy.

I'll have to check that out. I've I saw the original Tron in the 80s when I. Saw I watched the original Tron after I saw this one. Oh OK. How did that go? I'm interested to hear how. I've never, I don't think I've seen Tron Legacy honestly. I mean, it was interesting. It's like having and you're essentially jumping into the sequel having never seen the first one. Now the good news is, is you don't really need the whole back story of the first one to understand what's happening in Tron Legacy.

But like after I went back and watched the first one, which first of all it was just a wild experience in terms of production quality. Oh yeah, yes. But it it because the the first one is essentially the story of Tron. And in this and in Tron legacy, they don't tell you where really where Tron. They tell you like where he came from, but they don't tell you everything that's happened from his creation to now.

OK, OK. And so watching watching the first one after the fact, which is kind of like getting the back story on that particular character and how this whole universe came into existence. Interesting. OK, I'll check it out. I'm not afraid I made you watch this, so I'll. I'll watch. That I mean, I will. I will tell you the the reason I watched this movie to begin with is because Daft Punk did the soundtrack. OK, I look, that's a legit reason. I've watched movies for worse reasons than that, I promise. So like this, the soundtrack of the movie is really good. I love the costumes, the aesthetic, everything. Like the story is somewhat secondary to all the cool things that are on screen.

OK. All right, we can add that to the list. I feel like that I have a lot of nostalgia for the 20 tens right now. Oh yeah, draft. Punk like watching Tron like see in the theater like. Well, I was. I was watching Loot the other day, a show on Apple TV. My wait, what? Is it? Rudolph's show called Lute. It's Maya Rudolph's show on Apple TV. Oh oh. Yes, he's like a billionaire. Yeah.

And I loved it the the song that they used for the opening credits. And so I went to get the soundtrack for the show and this is the second season and the first season has music that's like even older that's like this like 20 times like hip hop like in in earlier. So it's just kind of like, I've also, Lindsay been in somewhat of a nostalgic phase lately because I've been listening to like all these old like hip hop songs I have.

To go down that. Good days. Music. Yeah. Love. It awesome, right. Well, thank you both, Mel. It was great to see you. Thanks so much for dialing in from Mexico. We appreciate it. Twice. I dialed in twice. Twice. You're the you're a champ. Thank you.