- courtesy of imdb.com
Have you too been wondering why The Social Network, out this Friday, is being allowed to continue on its upward climb of overhype without being stopped by the slimy tentacles of a lawsuit? Thought so. Well with some leftover knowledge from my take-no-prisoners Mass Comm Law class from undergrad and this article from CNN Money, I have the answer.
Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old mascot and CEO of Facebook, is famous.
By willingly thrusting himself into the public eye by inventing the website that changed all our lives and amassing a net worth of $6.9 billion, he has, more or less, given up his right to a reasonable amount of privacy and an accurate portrayal of himself in a major motion picture.
Sucks, doesn’t it?
Facebook’s spokespeople and Mark himself are saying left and right that the film largely fabricated some of its material. The CNN Money article brings more to this periwinkle-blue table: The Social Network isn’t the first jab at Mark’s rise to infamy and fortune. A book was published called The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook — A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal, which simply sounds like the original title of the movie before it was shortened to make it tweetable. Some scenes from the book – which the author admits to exaggerating or flat-out making up – were carried over into the movie. The ambiguity just keeps growing like speculation over Justin Bieber’s gender.
Hence the film’s mantra: they’re not touting truth(who needs that?), but rather “storytelling.”
And if Mark did sue Columbia Pictures, who produced the movie, that would only give the movie more publicity. And it’s been said many times amidst a PR nightmare: any publicity is good publicity. And Facebook has lodged itself so deep under our skin that practically nothing could dig it out.
