Last night, Cal Poly students gathered in Chumash Auditorium to watch a free screening of “The Social Network,” a film that revolves around the best kind of drama: Facebook drama.
The controversy concerning this documentary is highlighted by extensive media coverage. News outlets cover various topics relating to the film, from the validity of the events portrayed, to the speculation that Facebook is creating a society that lacks real motivation.
“The Social Network” tells the story of how Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg invented (or not) the popular site during his freshman year at Harvard. The plot progresses through two different time periods — it jumps between the pre-Facebook period, when ideas were first swirling and the site was being created, and the period following, which was a mess of lawsuits and accusations claiming Zuckerberg stole the idea from his peers.
Zuckerberg is also accused of subtly removing his business partner, Eduardo Saverin, from the Facebook profits after it started to take off. Saverin was the initial financial backer of the Facebook idea and without him, Zuckerberg would not have been able to launch the site.
Associated Students Inc. program coordinator Missy Bullock said they picked the movie because they knew it would be appealing to students.
It turned out that Cal Poly students’ viewpoints, like the critics and the media, were split.
“I’d say Mark Zuckerberg is a good guy,” agricultural business senior Tony Racanelli said. “His partner didn’t invest as much, he wasn’t on the same route.”
Zuckerberg himself said, plain and simple, the movie is fiction. The young entrepreneur told The New York Times that he wished when people tried to write about Facebook, they would at least try to get it right.
But not all students took Zuckerberg’s side.
“I liked the movie because it showed how you can be corrupted by money,” said environmental management senior Scott Hellesen. “But Mark chose money over friendship.”
The two main targets of criticism stemming from this film were Zuckerberg and Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay for the movie.
Zuckerberg took the heat from everybody who, like Hellesen, saw him as a thief of both ideas and money. And Sorkin took the heat from the rest, who said that his film did not tell the story of Facebook accurately.
Sorkin told The Associated Press that Facebook’s beef isn’t with the movie, it’s with the people who sued them and the testimony they gave.
Nonetheless, for better or for worse, Facebook has changed the world. According to Facebook’s fact sheet, there are more than 500 million active Facebook users.
New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote a column commenting on the effect Facebook has had on politics, saying we have entered “a brave new political world where candidates need only exist in virtual reality.”
Others speculate “The Social Network” may have opened the doors for more films to fall into a new, internet-based genre. According to The New York Daily News, plans have been announced to make a Google movie.
And the result of the lawsuits? In 2008, Facebook ended up paying $65 million to the Winklevoss twins for their lawsuit which claims Zuckerberg stole their idea. According to The Washington Post, they are now attempting to void the earlier settlement because Facebook did not provide an accurate evaluation of its shares.