‘The Social Network’ 10 Years Later Feels Too Sympathetic to Mark Zuckerberg

When The Social Network premiered in theaters 10 years ago today, there was a lot of hubbub about whether the film was “too mean” to Mark Zuckerberg. The new Hollywood trend of making biopics while the subject was still alive wasn’t quite as commonplace as it is today (I, Tonya, Vice, etc), and it remains rare to make one while the real-life subject is still in his mid-20s. And Aaron Sorkin‘s script—which starred Jesse Eisenberg as a lonely, sarcastic, rude Harvard nerd who bullies his ex-girlfriend and betrays his best friend—wasn’t exactly the kind of victory-lap biopic that Madonna will probably direct for herself. But, ironically, with a decade of perspective, The Social Network‘s big flaw in its legacy isn’t because it vilified Mark Zuckerberg. It’s because it sympathized with him.

The question as to whether the film was too harsh on the world’s youngest billionaire—which was often stirred up by Facebook and the real Zuckerberg himself—put both Sorkin and director David Fincher on the defensive in their press tour. Read old interviews with them, and you’ll find them standing up for Zuckerberg—or, more accurately, standing up for the version of him they created. (The real Zuckerberg was never involved with the film in any way. Sorkin and Fincher insisted no one from the cast and crew try to contact him, so as not to influence their own version of events.)

“I know what it’s like to be 21 years old and trying to direct and sitting in a room full of grown-ups who think you’re just so cute but aren’t about to give you control of anything,” Fincher told New York Magazine in 2010. “I know the anger that comes from when you just want to be allowed to do the things that you know you can do. So I feel it would be irresponsible to say this is the story of a guy who betrayed his friends.”

In that same interview, Sorkin called his version of Zuckerberg, “an anti-hero for the first hour and 55 minutes of the movie and a tragic hero for the last five.”

The director and screenwriter were responding to and pre-empting criticism, but they were also telling the truth. The thesis of The Social Network—which, full disclosure, is one of my favorite movies, to the point that I had an entire Tumblr dedicated to it in 2011—is more or less stated explicitly by Rashida Jones at the end of the movie: “You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be.”

Jones, playing a fictional junior lawyer on Mark’s legal team, humanizes Mark with this line before she leaves him in the deposition room, fruitlessly waiting for a response from his ex to his friend request. It’s a sad, lonely moment. You feel sorry for him. Like Sorkin said: a tragic hero.

I used to love that moment for its vulnerability, but now I find it hard to watch. In the years since The Social Network came out, the real Mark Zuckerberg sold and then lost our data, promoted fake news stories over real ones, provided a platform for international cyber warfare, refused to fact-check political ads, and stood aside while that platform was used to spread messages of hate and violence. We may never know precisely how much blame Facebook deserves for the 2016 election, but it seems hard to argue that Zuckerberg, and the Silicon Valley billionaires like him, have disrupted our world permanently, and not for the better. There’s nothing particularly tragic nor heroic about him, frankly.

There’s no way Sorkin could have predicted the exact trajectory of Zuckerberg’s life, though some give him credit for doing just that. The screenwriter himself has sort of taken credit for it—in a 2019 New York Times Op-ed, Sorkin wrote an open letter to the real Zuckerberg, decrying his decision to allow political ads with false information on Facebook. “In 2010, I wrote The Social Network and I know you wish I hadn’t,” Sorkin wrote. “I didn’t push back on your public accusation that the movie was a lie because I’d had my say in the theaters, but you and I both know that the screenplay was vetted to within an inch of its life by a team of studio lawyers with one client and one goal: Don’t get sued by Mark Zuckerberg.”

But rewatching The Social Network today doesn’t feel like Sorkin “having his say in theaters” at Zuckerberg; it feels more like a love letter to a misunderstood genius. An anti-hero for the first hour and 55 minutes of the movie, and a tragic hero for the last five. There’s no question as to who’s in the right during the scenes with the Winklevoss twins, who claim Mark stole his idea. When Mark smugly tells off Armie Hammer and his CGI twin (“You have part of my attention; you have the minimum amount,”) it’s a self-righteous, victorious speech, not unlike the one Jeff Daniels gives in the opening scene of The Newsroom pilot: “There is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world.”

When it comes to the deposition with his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) who he screwed out of his company, Mark is in the wrong, of course—but it’s personal. Eduardo froze the accounts, so Mark retaliated by diluting his shares. It’s not the cold, calculated move of a robotic villain, it’s payback from a friend who had his feelings hurt. And when Mark’s voice quavers with emotion when Eduardo confronts him in the Facebook offices, we know at least a small part of him regrets it. (It’s also worth noting that the book that inspired Sorkin’s script was essentially propaganda for Saverin’s lawsuit, who, in real life, is not nearly as sweet or lovable as Garfield; but, like Zuckerberg and all of his buddies, a tech bro.)

Just as they said 10 years ago, Sorkin and Fincher created a character for a movie, and it’s a great one. If we hadn’t been able to sympathize with Mark, The Social Network wouldn’t be the great movie that was, and still is today. But it was always a risk, making a movie about a real person who still has so much life to live. And, at least for me, its legacy has been tarnished by reality. In just 10 short years, the real Zuckerberg has proven the film’s thesis wrong—apologies to Rashida Jones, but actually, he is an asshole.

Where to watch The Social Network