On Dying Young

Monday night. 9 p.m.

It happens just about every week.

Katie: "Are we going to see a movie?"

I usually respond with something like a "heck yeah," and we go on our way. (every now and then the roles are reversed, but you get the point. 6 weeks= 6 movies). Our selection last night is what leads me to the purpose of this post: The Social Network. If all goes according to my maniacal plan, all DS106 Internauts (Charles, are you coming?!) will being seeing it tonight after (but kind of during) class.

"Was it that good?," you ask.

There are so many layers to that question. (Like ogres.)

There was a bit much bumpin'-in-the-club music for my taste. Not because I'm really all that anti-partying, but I am anti-repeated-monotonous-thumpin'-base-all-up-in-my-ear. But I guess I'll get over that for an objective review. Objective in the "personal bias" sort of way, you understand.

The acting was really good, I thought. This is, of course, saying something, because Justin Timberlake plays Napster mastermind Sean Parker and not even his fellow N*SYNC members would let him in On the Line back in the day. (That's not actually true, JT was well on his way and telling the others to cry him a river by then, but it felt an adequate insult to convey just how terribly this could've gone off for Justin.) Matter of a fact, his acting was so good I turned to Katie 3 scenes into his appearance and said "that guy looks like Justin Timberlake." Turns out it was.

She laughed at me. And then I laughed at myself, so really she was laughing with me.

Know what else we were laughing at? The movie. I had no idea it would be as funny as it was. Good thing, too, because it leaves you with a series of questions to ponder that are hardly comical in the least. Sort of a "laugh while you can" kind of thing.

I was dumbfounded by the talk of code and law and shares and percentages. But the idea was always clear. So and so got cheated, this dude is smart and the law on these issues is pretty grey when you want it to be (and then even more grey when you don't want it to be). (I also imagine that the technology talk is quite interesting to those who speak code). It views a lot like a play. Not because of the actors acting out a movie but because the characters each spend the entirety of the film acting out their own version of the story-- trying to set the stage to make his self come out on top. Meanwhile the audience knows they aren't getting the "real" story at all. Not from the characters and not from the writers of this movie.

For most of the movie it was the existence of this movie that had my attention. I remember life before 2004. So well, in fact, that 2004 doesn't really seem like that far back. Yet the world has changed exponentially since then. What's weird about that is that I was watching a movie about how the world has changed.

What's scary is that the story of how hundreds of millions of lives have changed in 6 years starts in the Harvard dorm room of a few drunk guys. Granted one is an internet prodigy, but still just a guy upset about a breakup. A guy who can now claim the creation of a 25 billion dollar program that is available to the public for free. WHAT?!

Katie and I kept wondering how there is already a movie about all of this litigation from just three years ago can now be a movie. A legitimate one. One that is currently shaping every single viewer's opinion of facebook. Not necessarily positively. After all, what we learn is that Zuckerberg essentially went the less moral (though clearly successful) route, leaving his best friend (Eduardo Saverin) in the dust in favor of a more cutting edge advisor, Sean Parker. There bathroom escapades, drug busts, and a wild summer facebook frat house. The heart of this movie-- the heart of facebook-- is sex, greed, and self-interest.

If you ask me, Zuckerberg did it to himself. How is it that this is a movie so soon after these trials covered the front pages? Well, in the age of facebook, word travels fast. A world, that is, that Mark Zuckerberg created.

The movie tracks that creation very well. It's informative, to be sure. It might be more information than Zuckerberg wanted mass-produced. In fact, it might even be more information than I wanted.

I left the movie with a strong-- I mean passionate-- desire to delete my facebook. Zuckerberg just doesn't have the right, you know? It just feels unjust how much power he had (and has) to shape the world we live in. His share is ridiculous! But mostly I was mad because because he does have the right. And he has it because I gave it to him. Every picture I uploaded. Every status I posted. I gave it away. Everything in me screamed to take it back-- but I can't. Even if I do delete my account, the content is out there. Free to cover the next billboard I see on my roadtrip home to AR. So if not to take it back, then STOP.

Katie warned me that I couldn't. I immediately saw her point.

Every single bit of information (or creation-- specifically my pictures) I gave to Mark Zuckerberg, I also shared with my friends. That was the point, right? That's the genius of this all, right? Oh, but what I really did was build up a sense of entitlement in every one of my friends to have that access to me and that content. So if the facebook went, I would automatically be at fault. My pictures would no longer be visible. But they aren't just my pictures anymore. In the minds of friends, every picture they're tagged in is also theirs. How dare I take that away? As if I have the right. So now everyone with access to my facebook albums AND Mark Zuckerberg have the "right" to my stuff. Everyone but me has the right.

Dangit.

When did I sign on to all of this pressure? And how did it inform my every day without me even realizing it?

There is another reason I can't delete the facebook. It's not only the wrath of the upset friends. The fact is that if I deleted my facebook, I would be well on my way to "left in the dust." Of, you know, the future. That's all. If I refuse to engage in the current technology, I'll refuse to be in the next. And the next.

And suddenly I'm sitting at IHOP (literally, we went to IHOP after the movie last night) at 21 years old, feeling like a grandmother because I already fear the pressure and the self-interest that will take over subsequent generations because of the facebook mindset that even I've been tricked into. The mindset that leads me to check the internet *at least* twice a day to see if someone has commented on my picture or my wall or my status. An anxious desire to feel like people care about me. Which quickly turns into an attitude of that people should care about me. It has this nasty way of producing such self-importance. The irony? With 5 headline-making teenage suicides that I know of in the past TWO weeks, we are witness to the least self-confident generation ever. Sad.

We're the most connected generation, but we're so disconnected. From the faces we pass on the street and the parents we're having dinner with and the friends we're hanging out with and the people in the car in the intersection who never saw it coming because we were on our phones. We see a profile page and feel like we know a person immediately. But it takes time to know a heart and a soul. We've been fooled.

Of course, that's not all on the shoulders of Mark Zuckerberg. But it does weigh heavily on the mind of the viewer leaving The Social Network, and that is no accident.

The final shot (SPOILER ALERT) is so telling. Zuckerberg sits at the empty conference room table of a major law firm having just been sued by his best friend and "friend requests" the girl whose heart he broke-- who broke his heart. Click after click he refreshes the computer quite literally looking for acceptance.

That concerns me. It concerns me for the generations to come. And it makes me a grandmother in a 21 year old body.

Don't worry, though. As we sat there over pancakes, eating our sorrows away, Katie informed that she thinks we're the type who'll die young, anyway.

As for me? Part of me believes I left my youth-- the innocent kind where all you need is your little piece of the world and the people in it to feel content-- with the year 2004 (the year of the facebook).

At least, that's what I'll tell the grandkids.

I'll tell you to go see the movie yourself.

(disclaimer: I do realize there are quite beneficial aspects of advancements such as facebook, I just decided to go all doom and gloom for a sec :D)