The Social Network

The Social Network tells the story of the origins of Facebook and how it has became such a phenomenon. The movie focuses on the two law suits that Mark Zuckerberg is involved in and with the flashbacks, we find out how Facebook was created. The first lawsuit is with the Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra as they are suing because Mark created Facebook based on their ideas. It all started when the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was dumped by his girlfriend, Erica, and went on a revenge rampage and created Facemash.com, which compares all Harvard girls on campus based on their hotness. Zuckerberg was then recruited by the Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra to help with their idea of opening a site called Harvard Connection which is similar to Facebook as the user can have a profile page and also add friends. Zuckerberg is also facing another lawsuit from his former best friend and CFO of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin, who is suing him for dropping his shares from 34% to 0.03%. From the flashbacks of the movie, Saverin was the one who was financing Facebook when it was starting from ground up but as it went on, there was a series of misunderstandings that eventually led up to the lawsuit and the broken friendship between two best friends.

Personally, I don’t think the movie was worth the nine dollars I paid for but there were certainly good points. Zuckerberg is the protagonist of the movie but I’m glad that he is not full on goody-two shoes like a typical hero should be. But it does have the similar plot of how the hero learns or gains something after having setbacks. At first, he is dumped by his girlfriend because she realizes that he is an asshole by how he puts people down when their intelligence is not on par with his. With two lawsuits and one of them from his ex-best friend, he slowly realizes he was also selfish in his decisions when he was starting Facebook. The change in him is shown at the end of the movie, when he settles his two lawsuits and sends a friend request to his ex-girlfriend on Facebook. But he is not the only character in this story that is selfish as there is also the Winklevoss twins and Narendra. With the explosion of “thefacebook.com”, Cameron Winklevoss decides that they won’t sue or hold legal action against Zuckerberg as they are “gentlemens of Harvard”. But the trio overturned their decision shortly after they were defeated at the rowing competition. It seems that humans are more prone to their greedy side when they are facing conflicts in their lives. The same thing goes for Saverin as he freezes the bank account because he feels betrayed as he warned Zuckerberg earlier but he still ends up trusting in Shawn Parker. Because of Facebook, the Winklevoss twins and Narendra, Saverin, and including himself, Mark Zuckerberg, have shown their greedy side throughout the movie.

During the flashbacks, it seems that there were a lot of misunderstandings that has led to the two lawsuits today. First off, the Winklevoss twins and Narendra never had face-to-face contact with Zuckerberg except for their first meeting. When they emailed or texted him, Zuckerberg would respond back that he had no time or he came up with an excuse. In the beginning, the trio would believe his excuse but while they were believing his lies, Zuckerberg was already programming Facebook. It seems that emails and texts are easier for lying as you are not facing the person directly because the trio only found out about the lies when they saw Facebook on the web. Even though emails, text messages, and Facebook are supposed to bring people closer, the movie depicts that it has created a certain barrier in communication.

Citizen Journalism

"Citizen Journalism" is essentially the idea of average everyday people taking the media into their own hands. It is the act of people researching, reporting, and broadcasting their own news. This is a very ironic concept because the professional media normally regulates the news that the public can view. With Citizen Journalism, the public are the ones who choose what news should be viewed. It is a very interesting concept because unlike professional media, it for the most part is not censored. So citizens may broadcast whatever they want no matter how controversial a topic, they can bring it to the attention of other citizens around the globe. This is especially true with the technology that is available today, it is very easy to record live events in real time and with social networks such as "Facebook" and video uploading sites such as "You Tube" news can be uploaded and distributed to thousands of people in seconds.

The only problem with "Citizen Journalism" is that many can question the authenticity of a report. This also goes back to the great advancements in technology that are available. It is very easy to make a fake report that can be blown out of proportion. One example is the "LonelyGirl15" video. In this video, the creator hired an actress to record in front of a video camera information that proved to be false. Another example can be seen in the Neda video. Although the video of her death looks extremely real, it could have been faked in the same way. With the extremey high speed at which this news can be distributed, distributing fake broadcasts can end up being a disaster.

Works Cited

Neda Agha Soltan Killing Scene. Published by hamedfrt. YouTube: 2009. Film.

The Social Network

The Social Network met my expectations of informing me of the establishment, creation, legal disputes, and inner workings of the development of one of the greatest social phenomenas. The directors took an interesting perspective, showing the questioning of Zuckerberg, Eduardo, and the Winklevos' throughout the movie which was in the present. Back story was then provided; events from the past supporting the accusations and explainations given by the characters that lead to the controversy and creation of facebook. THe directors did a great job with providing its audience with a great coherent, detailed, story line of how facebook was created.

The Social Network captivated my interests as it not only explained the historical signficance of the establishment of facebook, but it also provided a youthful aura to catch the attention of teenagers. Scenes in the movie were relatable to todays generation of teenagers. The movie, being a drama, made me skepticle during certain scenes; wondering if in realtiy, it actually played out in such a way.

Before viewing the movie, I wondered about the talent of the actors featured in the film. Each of the actors exceeded my expectations as the actors were believable and committed to their roles. Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg, was phenomenal. I would recommend audiences to view this movie, I think it is worth two hours of any ones time.

Citizen Journalism

In the sense of communication, citizen journalism is essentially the reversal of professional journalism and media; while the public normally play the receiving ends of media, in citizen journalism, the public become the senders. However, what citizen journalism entails highly differs in that it has no boundaries: what the public sees is what the public shows. Moreover, ubiquity is what strikes citizen journalism as a massive media outlet; anyone with a simple recording device can participate, especially with many phones nowadays allowing for video recording (even now in high definition). With an aspect of media that is controlled by the public themselves, several concerning issues arise.

YouTube, as Google's video-media giant, has become the international center for citizen journalists. YouTube plays the intermediary role between partakers of citizen journalism and the rest of the public. Thus, when one visits YouTube and comes across the Neda video, for example, what is seen is simply just a "video." There may or may not be contextual information in the video description but even so, there is the issue of reliability and authenticity. In the most-viewed video of Neda's death, the user included a short description of the incident and claimed he and his friend who shot the video were witnesses. The video does depict Neda just before her death however, there is nothing from the video itself that suggests that she was shot. The viewer does not know how it occurred or what happened afterwards; while she is shown bleeding quite extremely, this alone would not be enough to conclude that she had died. Moreover, the viewer is unaware of whether it is an act or a real-life incident and does not truly know if what the user wrote in the description is true. This is the major issue with citizen journalism. While the video was confirmed by multiple sources to be authentic, before confirmation, viewers were simply assuming that what they were seeing was indeed real. This may prove to be a major problem when citizen journalism produces a video that is actually a stunt to draw attention to an incident that never actually occurred.

Despite the questionable integrity of citizen journalism, its existence has drawn the publics attention to issues that perhaps would never have been publicized through professional journalism (e.g. Neda's death and how it happened). Moreover, the absence of boundaries allow for citizen journalism to bring about issues that would be otherwise prohibited to publicize by regular media. Though having a society control journalism purely by themselves is quite impractical and unreliable, having a balance between mainstream journalism and citizen journalism may very well revolutionize the ways in which global issues become known to the public.

Citizen Journalism

Captured and distributed through the lens of an ‘audience member’ or witness, citizen journalism is arguably ‘free’ from hegemonic political agendas. In contrast to news that is infused with political ulterior motives, citizen journalism can provide the ‘information recipient’ with a narrative in its natural state – the narrative is conveyed prior to censorship or the injection of a bias. While it can be argued that a narrative conveyed through the discourse of an audience member provides the ‘whole truth’ (instead of pieces of the event), does it accurately represent the opinions and perceptions of the masses? Citizen journalism is a form of social activism, portraying the conveyor’s need to construct mass awareness of an event or inherent social injustice. While it can take the shape of social and political dissension, citizen journalism can also exhibit its own implicit agendas.

While the YouTube videos of the ‘Neda narrative’ appear to convey the ‘truth’ of her death, the audience does not know who is behind the camera, who perpetrated the killing, what she was doing before getting shot, and the narrator’s relation to the victim (Fischer 2). All of these ‘unknowns’ may have implicitly affected the narrator’s construction of the narrative as well as our interpretation of the narrative. The visual of Neda’s struggle exhibits urgency, worry, sadness, disbelief, franticness, fear, and pain. While all of these emotions seem ‘real,’ the camera angles heighten these sentiments in the viewer, arguably creating a filter. Thus, while citizen journalism presents an alternative to government sanctioned media outlets, it is impossible for an event to be conveyed without a level of bias.

Citizen journalism endows the audience with ‘authority’ or the ability to construct and convey a narrative globally. While this ‘authority’ creates an alternative (to official media outlets) distribution of news, potentially presenting the audience with discarded or censored information, it turns many people into ‘sources,’ regardless of their credibility or biases. And while freedom of speech, beliefs, and expression inherently affect one’s interpretation of an event, a citizen journalist has the power to alter the ‘core text’ of the narrative and present the audience with a false foundation for interpretation. Thus, while citizen journalism enables the construction of subordinate narratives, it has the potential to exhibit the same fundamental flaws of the hegemonic narrative by conveying events through a specific lens.

With the advent of technology and social media, everyone has the ability to capture an event on film, upload it to the Internet, and instantly gain an audience of millions. While this process is enthralling, liberating, and endows users with a sense of power, it redefines the relevance and credibility of paid journalists. If anyone can distribute news to the masses via their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or blog, the necessity of the ‘journalist’ persona diminishes, erasing the social dichotomy between authority and audience. Though citizen journalism can effectively challenge political agendas and reveal social corruption, it also enables the spread of unregulated information, which has the potential to result in global misinformation and tarnish the reputation of ‘news’ and ‘media’ (Fischer 7).

Works Cited

Fischer, Annemarie. The Color Green and the G-Factor: The Iranian Protest Narrative 2009. 28 October 2010. “Global Media Narratives,” Binghamton University.

Neda Agha Soltan Killing Scene. Published by hamedfrt. YouTube: 2009. Film.

Global Narratives & Citizen Journalism

Global Narratives appeal to anyone seeking awareness, a cause to support or simply a desire to revel in an other's pain or prosperity. The appeal differs depending where in the world the receiver is and who the sender is. In the US for example, foreign struggles, disasters or movements are especially appealing. One reason is that their are so many cultures represented in this country that there is bound to be individuals and groups who associate themselves with the narrative. Another reason, the main one in my opinion though some may not agree, is the desire to be part of something "real." In the US we live a privileged life. This is not to say there aren't challenges faced and improvements to be made, but overall there is no immediate danger to our lives when we leave our houses, the majority are not in a state of life or death poverty or hunger and our government is not a totalitarian threat with unlimited power in restricting our basic freedoms. When narratives showing these events are sent they are received openly with huge support because Americans want to see and be part of something "real," instant, immediate, a feeling of being alive.

Citizen Journalism represents the present and future of how narratives get sent around the world. The advantages of citizen journalism include instant access to raw, unchanged stories easily shared with no monetary gains associated (mostly) and without any professional (media outlet) agendas. Also, it allows for stories to be shared when they may otherwise be blocked (for example, the Iranian Movement media that has been leaked by citizen journalist that would never have been seen if the government had their way of censorship). However, there are individuals who use their stories to distribute fiction as fact or use a specific representation of the story to lead receivers to believe what they desire them to believe. There are also ethical issues since there are no filters for citizens to distribute their narratives through technological means like there are filters/ethical 'laws' for professional journalist to follow. Overall, I think citizen journalism is a good alternative way to get information as long as receivers are intelligent enough to always go looking for the other side of the story, and not taking everything they see as fact (in gullible, instant expectation America, this is not easy feat).

Citizen Journalism: Good or Bad?

Citizen journalism can be a good thing because it gives anyone the right to participate in the journalistic process and maybe discover or share something note worthy that professional journalists haven’t yet. This way, the public has more than one avenue from which to get their information and news. All news released is not controlled by the TV channel or the politicians; it makes news more objective because you may find a story coming from an average person which one may relate to or trust more than a news station. Some might feel that a news channel presents stories in an exaggerated format to pull in more viewers and thus rely on them as a sole source of information less. The increased use of technology and cyberspace has lead to more and more of these non professional journalists posting news stories, information etc on their websites, blogs and other places easily accessible to almost everyone.
However, citizen journalism can be dangerous because it could promote conflicting information leading to confusion because people don’t know whose version of the story to believe. It also circulates an overwhelming amount of information; it is sometimes easier to just listen to one source like the news channel. Also, in such TV sources of news there are filters and protocols of what the public can or should see etc. Some grassroots journalists may show appalling or traumatizing events/ pieces of news that otherwise would have never made it to the public. It is good to protect ourselves and our children from these images but at the same time it is bad because we wouldn’t be aware of real situations and live in ignorance because we never see or hear about such tragedies.

The Social Network

Mark Zuckerberg (read: the smug little shit behind the latest Internet phenomenon) strikes me as the modern day epitome of geek-to-chic in this loosely-based-on-a-true-story drama with a flare of documentary and a smartass twist of comedy: the Social Network. Or does he? Sure he eventually got his vengeance on a hormone-fueled break-up with his college sweetheart, all the cash in the world like you couldn't believe, and a cyber empire that promises to live on long after the days of college are all behind us. But at the end of the movie, I came to a conclusion that Zuckie is just an insensitive, self-centered A-hole who happened to be portrayed in a much deeper pool of A-holeness in the same movie made about his greatest invention: "the" Facebook.

Now the argument of whether or not all the events are genuinely reenacted on the big screen or if the plot is clearly in favor of those who are against Zuckie and Facebook is positively irrelevant to my blog. I'm only criticizing the movie, not the history behind it.

So I came to the movie theater expecting an exciting on-screen discussion of how Facebook has a frightening control over my social life or at least how it managed to slip the word "facebooking" into my 10 year-old brother's vocabulary. And to be honest, Zuckie well outdid himself. Being a college dropout, he makes all the nerds and computer geeks out there once again get their hopes up for one day, they will become rich and famous through a moment of pure creativeness. And I don't doubt him, because anything could happen. You don't even need to be smart to be famous and rich these days (*cough* Jersey Shore dirtbags *cough cough*). However, I like that the movie makes it clear that the success of Facebook comes from controversies, lawsuits, betrayal, and definitely not a fairy tale.

The movie has an interesting approach to narrative. It starts with scenes from the past, and then mixes scenes from present to lead the story through the narratives of multiple characters, Zuckie himself included. First of all, the events in the past and present are chronological and parallel to each other, make a typical story telling narrative. Some people may have trouble following the plot at first, but as the movie reveals more plot, the flow becomes more fluent. Nonetheless, this approach makes it hard to tell when the movie begins, when it introduces conflicts, and when it ends.

The actings are okay, I wouldn't complain much except the fact that the actor who played Zuckerberg has a weird mumbling voice. Overall, the success of the movie at Box Office largely depends on the hype of Facebook. And Justin Timberlake. The movie is kind of a must-see, but I wouldn't give it a second look.

P/S: And the last scene where Zuckerberg desperately refreshed his Facebook page to see if his ex has accepted the friend request. Pa-the-ti-ca!

The Social Network

 The Social Network was one of those films that grabbed me by the throat and did not let go until the film was over. This movie was a huge inspiration to me after watching it a few weeks ago. I was intrigued by this story of one of the largest social networks in the world. It was very eye opening to see how Facebook became such a huge phenomenon in such a short time. Mark Zuckerberg’s invention has changed the way people connect and communicate with each other.

The director of the film David Fincher begins the film in a linear style, and then jumps surprisingly into a court case about 20 minutes in. After this it comes to light that we have been watching is the answer to a question from a lawyer asking Zuckerberg. The point of view of the film switches, depending on who's answering. I found myself devoted into the film afraid that if I missed anything I would miss an important factor. The film is beautifully shot, wonderfully arranged and doesn't let up for a second, taking what could have been a tedious subject matter and keeping you engaged from beginning to end. It is very intriguing to see The Social Network running along two parallel narrative tracks. One of those was tracing Zuckerberg’s development of Facebook and the other was detailing the lawsuits later filed against him by the Winklevosses and by former Facebook CFO Eduardo Saverin.

            The personalities of each character was very unique and made each of them either likeable, or the villain. There are many different elements to The Social Network. And the writing was superb; the whole film flowed very eloquently and chronological.

The social network

This movie is about how Mark Zuckerberg created facebook. It gave me a feeling that it’s like a documentary movie. The frashback made me confused for a while. Maybe I had overrated the movie before I watched it, I felt bored about the story.
Instead of talking about the movie, I would like to talk more about the idea it brings. Facebook is a social network service. Most of the Internet users have an account, even my mum. Then it brings up an argument. Do these kinds of technology pull people together or keep people apart from each other? I use myself as an example, I lost contact with my primary schoolmates for 7 years but we found each other on Facebook and we started hanging out again. In this case, it’s pulling people together. However, in the movie, Mark successfully made a website for people to contact but his ex-best friend asked him a question did he have one friend and Mark couldn’t answer.
Also, this movie made me think of a truth. It’s when people facing issues about huge amount of money, friendship is always less important. It’s really sad but true.

The Social Network

Name: Shahnawaz Syed
I have never really written a movie review or critique in the past, but this is not the first movie I’ve ever seen; which is why I am familiar with the practice. After all, regardless of how humble and loose some of us might be, there is always this little judgmental process going on in our heads; it is necessary for our survival and helps us decide where to spend our rather limited life time. Now I try my best not to refer to myself too much within a given assignment or use words such as “I” or “us”, but in this case it is pretty hard to talk about something and not admit that it’s me behind it, that would not only be an unnecessarily difficult task, but it will also come off as dishonest.
The movie starts off in its own unique way. In the usual teen flick which seems to be popular these days, we have a geeky looking guy who is crazy over an attractive girl and is willing to do whatever is necessary in accomplishing his task of getting with her. The girl on the other hand is barely shown to have much else going for her besides her beauty and bodily proportions. In this movie however, it was quite the opposite literally. We had an arrogant smart individual who is slightly socially awkward but already has a girl friend he’s in love with, yet he pushes her away and then spends the rest of the movie trying to somehow get back with her or at least prove her wrong. The girl herself was pretty but she was also very smart and had legitimate reasons to dump her boyfriend.
What do I like about this movie (Pros)? I believe it is an excellent movie and definitely worth seeing, I am also glad it received the popularity and money that it did; because it was well deserved. The movie itself as a piece of art is a fine one indeed. The acting, the scenes, the flashbacks, everything was perfect and well put. The guy playing Mark Zuckerberg has also very good acting skills; maybe it is because he fits the character so well. The movie was not un-realistic but it wasn’t more real than reality itself. Shows like Jersey Shore are quite entertaining but they are pushing the boundary as to what reality is supposed to be. There were no jocks or bullies pushing little kids and there was definitely no exaggeration of drug or alcohol abuse. The mixture of realism and fiction was blend just to perfection. I almost felt like I was at the trial myself, sitting right next to everyone. I think this movie deserves its own genre; maybe we can call it a fictional documentary.
What I didn’t like about the movie (Cons)? This movie lacks replay value; once a person has seen it they might not be interested in watching it again. I also hate the way it ended. We humans as a species are going through a rough patch in our lives, terrorism, racism, crime, hatred and lack of moral values has deeply affected the amount of optimism and good will present within our atmosphere. In a situation like this I think it’s pretty sad to see that someone like Mark Zuckerberg who worked so hard and made all this money never really achieved any of his goals and was unhappy in the end, he’s still that over compensational loser that he always was. He didn’t get the girl, he had no friends left and he was just typing on his computer like always. After making billions of dollars and coming so far, all he accomplished was the courage to request friendship with her ex girl friend online.
Of course the movie does not reflect how things actually happened, so it puts a bad label on Mark Zuckerberg in real life. Since we do not know how exactly the trial took place or what exactly happened between the creation of the idea and then face book itself, no one can guarantee that this movie is in fact based on reality. Even if it’s not real it is meant to come off as real because logos such as face book and Mark Zuckerberg were used. Basically the movie is a false depressing fictional depiction of true events sold as reality. However I will still give it a 9/10 because it is one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is no Forest Gump, Saving Private Ryan or Fight Club though; I can assure you that.

The Social Network

I personally have a love/hate relationship with facebook and The Social Network allowed me to understand that facebook was not just put together for all these terminologies that are used today. The movie itself as well as all the characters in it allowed the people that use and do not use facebook to understand how it has impacted society and the pros and cons of it.

What makes the movie so much more interesting and fun to watch is the simple fact that we, the audience, can relate to it. Mark is first presented to us as a nineteen year old wearing similar clothes to us and in a class room, who would have thought that he was going to to create such a thing as facebook and have almost everyone in the world create an account? Mark's very first step was blogging which is something that we are all realistically doing right now, does this mean that we also have the hopes of creating a even greater thing than facebook?

The best part about this movie is that the creator himself was not a people person and he was not socially accepted, he was socially awkward. This brings me to much thought, did he create facebook to make it easier for those that are not comfortable being face to face with people so that they can now communicate via "pokes" and "private messages?"

In my opinion facebook was merely created to build networks all throughout the world but in specifics within your own college campus and others. As facebook began to grow it became a tool where even calling a person on the phone was not seen as an option. People in present day are now not able to comfortably express themselves in person due to tools such as facebook.

The Social Network

The Social Network was a very pleasant surprise, as I was not initially expecting it to be as good as it was when I saw it. It depicts Mark Zuckerberg's experience as he created possibly the largest and most popular social networking site to date. The style in which the story was filmed was very interesting, with several lawsuits against Mark taking place for the duration of the movie, with intermittent flashbacks to the story as it is being told in the courtroom.

I feel that the film is very successful because it tells the story of a website that is so heavily used and that is so pertinent in our society today, and everyone can relate to it. It is also pretty amazing to see how the simple idea of a Harvard social website for students turned into a phenomenon that no one could have predicted the success of. Facebook has become a household name, spanning across today's generations and social standing (celebrities using the site, children and parents both having a Facebook page, etc), and by keeping the website simple and fairly easy to use, it is able to be used by a variety of people, businesses, and causes. Many businesses, whether local or commercial, have a Facebook page to reach out to fans. Films, TV shows, and other organizations and institutions also have Facebook pages that help bring in support. Facebook links different countries together, and as I have experienced firsthand, makes it very easy for long distance friends and family to keep in touch.

Facebook also provides us with information about our acquaintances and peers. Think- how many things have you learned about someone else (whether they be positive or negative), that you learned from reading or seeing it on someone's Facebook page? It allows us to be curious and nosy with no consequences, and many topics of conversation arise from happenings on Facebook (i.e; "did you see who she's together with now?", "so-and-so has two kids now?", "I saw on Facebook that he lost his job!", etc etc). As we saw in the film, when Mark added the "in a relationship" status on Facebook, features like that are what help to make the site so successful.

Facebook has totally revolutionized the internet and social networking institutions, and Aaron Sorkin's film The Social Network tries to give us insight as to how this phenomenon began. No one can predict where the future will take Facebook, and as the film shows, the website has come further than anyone ever imagined it could.

The Social Network

The Social Network was a great movie overall. On the surface, it almost seems like another stupid movie trying to make money off of the popularity of something else. This is what it seemed like to me when I first saw the trailer; I couldn’t believe that this idea was seriously being made into a movie. When seeing the trailer at other movies and as a commercial on TV, I had similar reactions. Over time, though, the concept of the movie grew on me. I thought this might have been marketing at its finest, but after hearing all of the good reviews, I decided to give the movie a chance.

After seeing the movie, it becomes clear that there are so many things to be gleaned from it. It epitomizes so many things about our generation and about humans in general. One of the most important quotes of the movie is the one where Marc says his goal is to “[take] the entire social experience of college and [put] it online.” College is a unique experience in terms of the possibility of meeting new people and the way we meet them; it’s an experience everyone wants to have. Facebook facilitates this process greatly by allowing users to find each other by name, a.k.a. “facebook” each other. It’s a lot easier to facebook someone you met or friend someone you already know when seeing them on another person’s wall than it is to get everyone’s phone number or other contact information separately.

Another fact the movie touches upon is that people like to see other people they know online; everything is more meaningful when it’s about people you know. This was the logic behind the FaceMash website Marc launched in the beginning of the movie. If someone sees a story posted online about a random person in an extraordinary situation, it’s interesting. If the subject of the story is someone that person actually knows, they drop whatever they’re doing to read it. Facebook makes this phenomenon much more frequent and much easier to attain. If someone posts a story or an interesting anecdote about themselves on their news feed, their friends almost feel as if they’re involved; they feel a connection to some extent. They feel as if they are getting a firsthand account of the story, as opposed to reading about or hearing a reporter tell the story.

This relates to another reason that was pointed out in the movie about why people love facebook: they like to learn about people they know and see what’s going on in their lives. We all do it once in a while – look at our news feeds, look through our friends’ new albums, sometimes comment on them or press the like button. It’s impossible to be everywhere at once, and it’s impossible for someone to hang out with all of his or her friends all the time. Even when with certain people, it’s impossible to witness every single thing that happened that day or night. Facebook helps people see what they miss; it helps them “re-live the party the next day” and makes them feel like they were there, even if they were not.

Basically, facebook fulfills a great number of social needs for many people, which is one of the reasons for its popularity. The Social Network really hit the nail on the head in describing and portraying this.

The Social Network

The Social Network is a biopic on Mark Zuckerberg’s founding of Facebook that attempts to be accurate to the reported events that took place, but utilizes falsehoods in order to make the story more dramatic and advance controversial themes. The film begins with Mark's girlfriend breaking up with him and his subsequent revenge by creating a site that asks visitors to rate the attractiveness of their female classmates. While this rating site did exist, in real life it allowed users to rate classmates of both sexes. This key difference shows the motive of the filmmakers in how they chose to characterize the Mark Zuckerberg character as inherently misogynistic. This misogynistic theme is carried throughout the film as the Facebook creators pick up groupies and one founder deals with a "crazy" girlfriend. The real Mark Zuckerberg defended himself from the misogynistic allegations in interviews by saying that he has had the same girlfriend since before he even founded Facebook.

Mark's rating site was shut down by the Harvard administration because he downloaded files from Harvard sites and without authorization uploaded them to his own site. This gave him notoriety on campus through the school's newspaper, which led him to the Winklevoss twins. These twins were interested in building a dating site for students on campus and they needed Mark's help to build it. Instead of building it, Mark went around their backs and built his own site, a social network called The Facebook. This obviously enraged the Winklevoss twins, who eventually decided to sue Mark for "stealing their idea". After Facebook had years of success, the twins eventually "won" the case and made a settlement for millions of dollars. No one will ever know if the "idea" that the Winklevoss twins had was really the same "idea" that became Facebook, but either way ideas in themselves have little value at all, it is the execution. The courts probably ruled the way it did because Mark interrupted in the "execution" of the Winklevoss's plan, but no one will ever no for sure. I enjoyed how this theme was explored throughout the film.

In my opinion, the most valuable idea that Mark might have stolen was the ability for a site to authorize new users by using a ".edu" email address. While social networks has been around for a few years, authorizing in that way is incredibly unique. Without this feature, Facebook would have never gotten off the ground.

The most important theme of the film was the concept of myth. In one of the final scenes, an attorney tells Mark, after he made a settlement, that "every creation story needs its devil". This single line addresses the fact that the entire film is a myth in itself and shouldn't be taken too seriously. Unfortunately, while this theme is great, it is also incredibly subtle and is missed by most reviews that I've read and people that I've talked to. Viewing the film through this lens greatly increased my appreciation of it.

The Social Network

The Social Network, although perhaps a dramatized depiction of the creation of the social networking site Facebook, proved to be a riveting example of the birth of an idea in our modern digital age and the consequences that follow.

Mark Zuckerberg applied his perspectives and observations on his real college life and adapted them to the web. He noticed the college student’s fixation on relationships and hook-ups, he noticed the attraction of “reliving” a party online through the photos and comments of everyone at the party, and he had the technical abilities to make this possible. For all this to become essential to be a part of, however, Zuckerberg needed to find an angle: exclusivity. By making Facebook exclusive, Mark made it desired and almost necessary to be a part of. It was a new level to connect with your friends on and to network and if you were not a part of it, you were missing out.

Not only did the story line reflect the fast-paced immediacy of an internet sensation, but also the way the movie was constructed. Almost every character spoke incredibly fast and the film quickly cut back and forth between the story line and two secondary plot lines of the lawsuits.

Overall, the film provided a great look into the corporate complications and behind-the-scenes, “real life” drama that are innate in any great idea that makes it big while translating how such a situation is amplified by the internet’s capabilities to spread an idea and hype instantly.

The Social Network and why I hated it

When I first saw the trailer for The Social Network preceding Inception, I was uninterested, bored, and decidedly not going to pay money to see it in the theater. I quickly forgot about it, and was not reminded of its existence until it came out and I started to hear the rave reviews. Still determined to save my $9 and not support what I described as a “Michael Cera/Justin Timberlake fiasco” (yes, I know it was Jesse Eisenberg and not Michael Cera), I ignored it.

When Frau Fischer made it an assignment to see the movie, I grudgingly dragged my girlfriend to the theater for two hours and one minute that I will never get back. Leaving the theater, I had a few things on my mind: First, I had a deep dislike for Justin Timberlake and his character (who, perhaps next to Kathy Bates’ character from Misery might be the most unlikeable film character ever). Second, I felt like the film itself was void of creativity, suspense, and interesting plot. The outcome of the events were explicit from the beginning (he will be sued by everyone), so the value, assumedly, was in the journey there.

I was bored, sitting there only to experience Eisenberg’s good comedic timing and witty banter (a la Gilmore Girls). In the end, I was content with writing this movie off as “not bad” but “not amazing.” When I expressed this to a friend, he stared at me blankly and said, “You didn’t read any social commentary into it?” And I, believing that you can read social commentary into any film (from Resevoir Dogs to Grease 2) but it won't necessarily say anything valuable, replied, “not really.” But I did think about it.

And so now, from a cultural perspective, I can more easily understand why the movie as a whole is not enjoyable to me. Looking back, I realized that it showcases our society’s greed and arrogance, embodied by all every character: The Winklevosses’ obsession with gaining recognition, Zuckerberg’s pride and inability to communicate with those of “lesser-intelligence”, Sean Parker’s encouragement that it’s possible to “have it all.” It was a blatant reminder of humanity's condition as egocentric and narcissistic.

Looking at it through the lens of our discussions on communication, I see two topics emerge: That we want to be the sender more than the receiver (because the sender has control, garners attention, is rewarded with reputation) and that if we must be the receiver, it should be within the confines of an exclusivity that we define (because it provides us with some control and elevates our sense of self-- think how excited the Winklevosses were while discussing the exclusivity of the Harvard Connection.)

From that perspective, I see some 'value' in this film, but my suspicion is that audiences, distracted by Eisenberg’s wry humor and their dislike for Timberlake and Hammer’s characters, will miss the message: We are all selfish creatures, starving for attention, and so cheaply and easily satiated by this website.

Metaphorically Speaking..

A story, on the other hand, is the pot inside the pot. It is a smaller more specific piece of equipment used often for entertainment purposes and involves not just the discourse of information from sender to receiver, but the conveyance of a plot in artful representation of events (Herman 43-44). A narrative includes traits, identities, and notions used to identify and characterize specific elements of time and space (Barthes 247-9). A story infuses the elements of mood, feeling, distance, and tone to enhance delivery and comprehension of the message (Herman 44).

It can be said a story is a narrative, because as the pot within the pot, it certainly obtains the characteristics the of creator to audience pass of information. It cannot be said, however, that all narratives are stories. They all contain discourse, the transmission of opinions, feeling, or intended messages, because all living creatures create and receive discourse inherently throughout their existence (Abbott 15-19). Just as the pots need a substance and heat source within the steamer, narratives and stories need a thought source which derives from discourse.

Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative; Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Barthes, Roland|Duisit, Lionel. New Literary History, Vol. 6, No. 2, On Narrative and Narratives (1975). Pp 237-272. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web.

Herman, David. The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

“The Social Network” Critique

The Social Network is a very successful movie. I really love it. It shows the popular social website Facebook’s founding history. It tells the story of two Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Eduardo Saverin, CFO and their founding of Facebook. The movie used flashback narrative, beginning with two parties suing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the present time. The plaintiffs: Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winlevoss and their business partner Divya Naredra and another party, Mark’s best friend, the CFO Eduardo Saverin. On the defense was Mark Zuckerberg. Through the litigation processes, they explained the whole story about their business to the audience.

At the very beginning, Mark was dating his girlfriend, Erica. On a whole date, Mark went on about how important it was to get into important clubs. His insanity made Erica break up with him, and she told him he was a “jerk”, not a “nerd”. Upset by this, Mark made a website called “Facemash” one night. The website gave males the chance to compare the physical attractiveness of female students. This triggered everything, and a group of students- Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winlevoss and Divya Naredra- wanted Mark to help them build their Harvard connection for socializing with other students and meeting girls, because “who doesn’t want to date a Harvard guy?” They thought Mark was smart enough to help them finish their big project.

This Harvard connection gave Mark the idea to create a site called “TheFacebook”. According to Mark, he thought people liked to see their friends’ pictures, profiles, and statues and know anything about their friends, or to get to know a new friend they had just met at a party. “Why doesn’t he put the whole college social experience online?” I was really impressed by his smartness. He shared his idea to Eduardo Saverin. Eduardo agreed to help him, agreeing that it was a very impressive idea. As Mark and Eduardo started to build “TheFacebook”, more and more people know about it and started to use the social networking site. It turns bad later, however, when The Winkle brothers and Divya Naredra thought Mark had stolen their idea; they wanted to sue Mark, but Tyler against it because it was not “gentle” to do.

At the other end, Mark and Eduardo were becoming more and more popular around the campus. Eduardo’s new girlfriend Christy introduced the Napster founder Sean Parker to Mark and Eduardo. Sean Parker gave Mark a great impression but not Eduardo. Sean’s greatest contribution was giving Mark the idea to call their project “Facebook”; it would be simpler, and better, than “The Facebook”. To them, it was a brilliant idea and from then on, Sean started to work with Mark to help Facebook grow. He helped Facebook with large funds and entered it into the real business industry. However, Eduardo soon got angry at Mark because he felt his CFO status was being replaced by Sean, so he closed the company bank account in order to gain Mark’s attention. In spite of this, however, Facebook continued to grow very quickly; it went international and became its own actual company. Sean and Mark eventually set Eduardo up to sign a stockholder share contract in which he only would receive a very small percentage. As a business major, this made me feel that the real world’s business dealings are quite cruel and heartless. For businessmen, it’s all about money. And that’s why Eduardo went on to sue his own best friend, Mark.

And I really like the part Mark was looking at his business card, which printed: “I am a CEO, Bitch”. Sean told him to do that as payback to his ex-girlfriend. It was really funny.

In the end, a lawyer for the defense told Mark that he is not a jerk, he just trying so hard to be one. This directly reflects from the beginning what Erica said to Mark. In a following scene, he went back and checked Erica’s Facebook profile and finally sent out his friend request, constantly refreshing the page to see if she responded yet. Regardless of his success, he could not rid himself of his feelings for her.

The Social Network

The Social Network was an all around incredible movie. Facebook has become a major part of today’s society. It connects the world in so many ways, and has truly made an impact on this generation. What many people don’t consider, though, is the background behind the website. Many spend hours at a time looking at peoples’ “walls,” but never actually think about what the site is actually doing or how it came to be. The movie introduced viewers to this thought. Facebook has become it’s own language in today’s technological world. Terms such as “friending” and “unfriending” are being considered for dictionaries, and boyfriends and girlfriends sometimes aren’t officially dating until it’s “facebook official.” Facebook keeps friends up to date with what’s going on in their “network,” what their friends are up to, and who went to what party. It connects long lost friends and family, and it even has the ability of causing problems in friendships and relationships.

Much of this thought would not come up without the storyline of The Social Network. This movie informed each and every viewer exactly how Facebook evolved, and it’s impact on the lives of today’s young adults. Mark Zuckerburg is brilliant, and he was portrayed phenomenally throughout the entire movie. The court cases are issues that would have never come to many peoples’ attention, and it is interesting to know just how much time and effort was put into the site. Each and every character had his own unique personality. They were all very strong and impacting. Such a small cast enabled the plot to focus on only the important people that went into the site. It was enjoyable to watch the interaction between all of the characters, and the question of whether or not the problems would work out was a definite attention grabber. All in all, the movie was phenomenal. It opened my eyes to so many aspects of a website that I use multiple times a day.

The Social Network

College is supposed to be a void of social discrimination. We're all on even ground after high school, right? Wrong. From childhood we realize, the point of the "popular" table is that only so many people can sit at it. The appeal of invite-only parties is that only so many people can go. As we get older the appeal of fraternities, sororities, and member-only clubs are the mysteries and privileges allowed only to those few selected to view the inside. Finally, the way to let the maximum amount of people know you're having fun without them is by putting it on the internet.

E.J. Westlake states about Facebook's newsfeed, "I [also] remember feeling a little strange knowing that my every move (well, almost every move) would be seen by all of my Facebook friends." What Westlake clearly does not understand is that is exactly the point. Facebook was made to broadcast one's thoughts, experiences, and photos on a continuously updating "blog," if you will, about their lives. Mark Zuckerberg's character in the documentary-style release of "The Social Network" stated about adding photos to facebook, "You don't just go to a party anymore, you go to a party with a digital camera so you and your friends can relive the party the next day."

College students have a good understanding of the features and obsession surrounding the site, but that is not the full story. The Social Network explains the difficulties connected with creating such a coveted idea so well, and on a completely different plane how obsessed people are with sharing information. Who knew 10 years ago that by creating a site where people simply share information about themselves and their lives with their friends, that the creator had the potential to become the youngest billionaire in the world? Who knew that he could get separately sued by his best friend as well as those wishing they had come up with the idea first?

It's also interesting to note that this generation has become so obsessed with the concept of Facebook that even while it is still a rapidly developing technology, the other media industries are already documenting its beginnings and creating discourse for discussion on its conception and current content. The intended audience for the movie spread further than the generation it is effecting to explain to the parents (and even grandparents) the draw for such a sight. The method of discourse through cinema also captures an interesting fact that this idea is such an integral part of our current culture that people would pay to see the story of its creation.

Finally the cultural relevance of the movie, of the sight, and of our nation's obsession with digital narrations is wild and unnerving. People no longer tell stories for value but often to hear ourselves speak. The current mindset has changed from tell information in short, concise content when necessary to pass it from one person to another, or for the joy of speaking among friends to If you're going to get the pot dirty, you might as well cook a feast. Likewise, if you're going to tell a story to get attention, you might as well tell the world.
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Westlake, E.J. "Friend Me If You Facebook." Project Muse; Scholarly Journals Online. Winter 2008: 21-38. Web Journal.

The Social Network. Directed by David Fincher. Columbia Pictures, 2010. Film.

The Social Network

I found the movie to be very intriguing and it captivated my attention for the duration of the film with the main characters wit and sarcasm. What made the film so popular and interesting is how relevant it is to viewers especially my generation. Facebook has in a way defined our high school/college experience, it is the first thing an outsider could look at and find a common factor between teens and young adults of all backgrounds. College students are so dependent on facebook to stay connected it has become a necessity much like our cell phones have become. Now that facebook is open to any individual not just those with a university network, the movie relates to even more people. The film holds your attention because it is a true story and people are thinking how old they were and what they were doing when they were first introduced to facebook.
It is genius how Mark Zuckerberg comes up with the various aspects of a facebook account by determining what college kids want and adding them in with various algorithms and programming code. They want to talk to their friends and see what everyone is doing, meet members of the opposite sex etc. I found the scene where he realized he should add a “relationship status” part to the page both comical and smart how he worked off of what his users would find important. Also, the fact that he made sure facebook would never “crash” is definitely one of its best features and what makes it so successful; however I didn’t even realize that until seeing this film that if the sight didn’t function as well as it did it may have never became as popular as it is today.

"The Social Network"

The Social Network was an overall fantastic movie. The combination of factual drama and comedy grabbed my attention for the entire two hours of air time. Ironically the first thing I did when I got out of the theatre and back to my dorm was check Facebook. I found the entire history of Facebook to be very interesting. The idea that one man can create an entire social network from a college dorm room still actually blows my mind. I also had no idea about the huge controversy of the site or about Mark Zuckerburg's involvement with Sean Parker from Napster. I thoroughly enjoyed the way they portrayed the students thoughts on Facebook very humorous because all the hype is true. The site is extremely addicting. Almost everyone I know with a Facebook checks it immediately as they open or turn on there computers, regardless of what they have to do, Facebook is the first website they access. One example from the movie that I found hilarious was when Christie attempted to burn Eduardo's room to the ground when she noticed that he had not set his relationship status to accommodate her even though they were clearly still dating. Although this is a very extreme example, I know my girlfriend would not be happy if I were to do the same thing. Another interesting thing that I found very cool was the idea that this is something that is actually happening now. It is not about a controversy from back when my parents were young, it is a website that I am a part of and use everyday. Just the idea that it is something that I am actually a part of definitely added to the appeal of the movie for me anyway.