The Social Winter Begins

Over twenty years ago in the US, a young man's fancy often turned to women. Not only women on the internet but even women with whom he regularly interacted or might potentially interact with. Now as this brand of dating culture is seemingly falling into obsolescence, it's worth remembering how much it spurred the early progress of social media, the very thing that's been strangling mating instincts to death for the past fifteen years. Witness 2010's The Social Network, David Fincher's engaging biopic of Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook.

Facebook's still with us to-day. I use it. I know it has a reputation now of being for the older folks as the young generally now prefer TikTok and Instagram but even many young people maintain Facebook accounts too keep in contact with their parents and grandparents. Which makes it all the more fascinating that Mark Zuckerberg, portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, is shown to be driven in his quest to break new internet ground by the culture of campus lust surrounding him at Harvard.

It's hard to see exactly where Zuckerberg's feverish pursuit of status ends and his desire to alleviate his loneliness begins. He wanders through life cloaked by his rapid-fire, glib observations and ripostes, sometimes clever, sometimes vicious, but always seeming like he's having to backtrack slightly because his line of thought has already breezed past issues everyone else is still struggling with.

He comes off as a genius but did Facebook really need a genius to create it? I'm left wondering how accurate Aaron Sorkin's screenplay really is and if maybe he so awed by what Facebook achieved that he was unable to conceive of Zuckerberg being an otherwise unremarkable young man. But taken as a work of fiction, it is an interesting portrait of a brilliant young man and a worthy reminder of how young people used to indulge their sexual impulses with each other.

The Social Network is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a playlist of movies with Trent Reznor soundtracks. Now that Reznor, with his collaborator Atticus Ross, has scored many more films and diversified his style quite a bit, it's interesting going back to 2010 when a score from him could be expected to sound a least a little bit like Nine Inch Nails.

X Sonnet 1967

The fate of finger brains explains the tune.
For music floats the ghost of swimming jam.
In the mash the berries bring a heavy spoon.
Conduct your buck beneath the glowing ram.
Create your money made of molten steel.
Advance the vision quest below the belt.
You'll see the baby time was something real.
You tried to think but barely only felt.
Return with pelts and make a savage bed.
The photo shoot began before the wheel.
Invent another kind of foot to tread.
And win a special frozen chicken meal.
Your kitchen space extends beyond the poles.
But careful now, it's full of deadly holes.