Scott Adams: The Social Network, "The best movie I've ever seen"

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_social_network__review/

by cwan • 16 years ago

147 106 16 years ago

KoZeN• 16 years ago

Wow. I naturally expected the title of that blog to be tongue-in-cheek.

I was actively avoiding paying to see that movie as I feared it would be another Hollywood over-dramatisation of an actual event but based on the emphasis Scott placed on the quality behind this movie, I may just change my mind!

gecko3• 16 years ago

I really liked it.

It's certainly not 100% accurate, and I don't think it's trying to be. It glosses over some major aspects of Facebook's history (like Zuckerberg's friendship with Graham, the heavy focus on Wirehog, the importance of Dustin Moskowitz, and so on), it compresses a lot of events into a shorter timespan than they occurred in real life (Facemash, renaming from Thefacebook to Facebook, the excising of Saverin from the company, the acquisition of VC, the move to real offices), and it fabricates a bit wholesale (it plays up one of Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriends, making it seem as if she was his only one; portrays Zuckerberg as having heavy asperger syndrome; implies that all of Facebook's funds came from Saverin; pretends Facebook was started because Zuckerberg wanted into Harvard's Final Clubs, etc.). That's true.

But it's not about vilifying Facebook; the dramatic license was taken to be dramatic, not to make some point about Zuckerberg or Facebook. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a total genius; his role as CEO is respected; he is not portrayed as having ripped off the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins, and while he does ultimately screw over Saverin, the movie goes to pains to make it clear that it had to happen for the success of the company. At the risk of sounding a bit truthy, I think that the movie did a superb job capturing the feel of a startup in Facebook's situation, even if some of the facts are slightly off.

While I think this review is slightly hyperbolic, I don't think it's crazy, either. The movie was insanely well-done from start to finish, and I don't honestly think that the creative license is much worse than, say, Apollo 13. I think if you were expecting to see geeks get vilified, you'll be very pleasantly surprised.

iamdave• 16 years ago

*asperger

narrator• 16 years ago

Come on, it's a movie where the hero uses Emacs! Unless you are vi bigot, you're going to love it.

philwelch2• 16 years ago

I am a vi bigot and I loved it.

acangiano• 16 years ago

From the comments: "He's just a guy who knows a bit of PHP and wanted to get rich, along with the creators of 1000 other social networking sites, and just got lucky that his went viral."

It's amazing how easy it is to dismiss other people's accomplishments. Notice how "Knew a little bit of PHP and got lucky" is used to represent years of hard work, business and development wise.

You must have never run a business if you think that Zuckerberg's success came easy and was due to sheer luck.

stanleydrew• 16 years ago

Agree, but using the word "genius" is still a bit extreme, which is what I think incited that reaction.

whereareyou• 16 years ago

Mark Zuckerberg is a genius.

_6kat2• 16 years ago

As someone said on another story about Zuckerberg, if a person can go from $0 to having a net worth of over $6.9 billion then they are most definitely a genius.

seldo3• 16 years ago

I've seen a lot of coverage of Zuck as a "genius computer hacker", reinforced by the Hackers-style montage in the film which makes it look like what he did was really hard (oh no, he busted out emacs! He must be a genius!).

Actually, Facebook's core functionality, at least at small scale, is trivial. It's a database of people, with CRUD on top. All the really hard technical problems Facebook has solved -- and there were many, don't get me wrong -- have to do with scaling that system, and those problems were solved long after Zuck was no longer hands-on with the code every day.

That's not to say I don't think Zuck is really smart. What I think he's really smart at, though, is interface design and user experience. The film touches on this, noting that Facebook's exclusivity was key to its early popularity. However, the reason Facebook really trounced Friendster and MySpace was that it was a much, much better experience. Everything worked perfectly and each screen was carefully thought-out in terms of information density and placement.

Of course, Sorkin's narrative for the film is that Zuck is an aspie geek who built a website because he doesn't understand people, so the counter-evidence -- that Facebook's design is clearly built by somebody who understands people very well indeed -- has to be downplayed.

cynicalkane2• 16 years ago

Managing a large, rapidly scaling web business such as Facebook is not exactly trivial, either.

Tichy5• 16 years ago

Isn't the main reason that Facebook is winning that they are really, really aggressive about making people invite their friends? MySpace also grew by getting access to people's Inbox and spamming their contacts, but FB might have taken it to the next level.

I hardly ever log into, but FB seems extremely pushy to me. They constantly push people at me who might be my friends. Either I could invite them, or I could make them use FB more by befriending them.

Facebook is just a more subtle version of Farmville in that respect...

Goladus2• 16 years ago

Facebook didn't 'trounce' MySpace until relatively late in the game.

maxawaytoolong• 16 years ago

represent years of hard work

Facebook has only been around for 6 years. The first investment of a half million dollars was made 6 months after the site had launched. I'm not diminishing Zuckerberg's insight or hard work but anything that takes off that fast involves a lot of luck.

hardy263• 16 years ago

Even though Facebook has only been around for 6 years, don't forget the years of him working on programming.

If an engineer who has worked for several years on the field, but finally gets a big project that's completed in a year, you don't throw away his previous experience and say that he's just a lucky guy who landed a big job. It's the sum of all the work before that adds up to the current experience now.

anamax• 16 years ago

> I'm not diminishing Zuckerberg's insight or hard work but anything that takes off that fast involves a lot of luck.

"take off fast" does not require luck. Yes, being lucky can result in take off fast, but there are things that took off fast that didn't involve luck. (Unless you think that "right place, right time, right thing" is an instance of luck, that is, happenstance.)

olalonde2• 16 years ago

You are right, he certainly is extremely talented and intelligent, but I would argue that the genius label is misused here. It seems that mainstream media's tendency nowadays is to label every highly successful business founder as a "genius". In my opinion, Einsteins and Mozarts are geniuses and are much less common than people who build successful businesses.

That being said, I think there is absolutely no reason to dismiss what Zuckerberg did or claim that it was all luck. Just don't fall into sensationalism and call him a genius.

tdfx• 16 years ago

I prefer to label successful businessmen as socially or emotionally intelligent. Building a business requires many things, but the type of "genius" that we got from great physicists and artists is certainly not analogous to bringing people together and making money. It's a different measure of intelligence, but one that I think is more able to be learned than a gift for the natural sciences.

maguay• 16 years ago

At least genius is a better term to throw around loosely than ninja or rockstar IMO...

prawn• 16 years ago

A lot of the reactions to entrepreneurial success online remind me of the response to criticism of contemporary art:

Contemporary Art = I could've done that + Yeah, but you didn't.

pyre2• 16 years ago

So, does that make Jackson Pollock a 'genius artist' or a 'genius entrepreneur'? ;-)

FlemishBeeCycle• 16 years ago

Most things come down to luck, both bad a good. One developing a terminal disease and one winning the lottery are both an instance of chance (luck).

To say that Zuckerberg got to where he is purely because of luck is as equally false as saying that luck has nothing to do with it. I think the real issue that people are arguing about is, colloquially, whether the success is "deserved". You have people who look at the circumstances and assert that "given the opportunity I could have done the same thing", to them - it is an instance of luck, and undeserved success.

To others, they perhaps are recognizing that more went on beneath the surface that we know about - perhaps even though technically what went on is nothing special, there may be other factors in play that only a select few would be able to surmount.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but the digestion of the circumstances will vary from person to person. There exist many people who could have made "Facebook" and been equally successful; there exist MANY more people who would not have been able to.

I think that the polarization of responses has a lot to do the framing in absolute terms. Whatever attributions that are ascribed to him, cannot be said to viewed with equal validity for all observers.

ErrantX• 16 years ago

Reading this I think that, actually, he likes this film not because it is a brilliant topic or for the fact it is about Facebook - but because it is extremely well written and realistic.

I agree entirely with his gripe that such a thing is unusual for "big" modern films.

This actually might make me go and see it now :)

seldo3• 16 years ago

The NY Times noted that audience reaction to The Social Network has been split very firmly by age:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/media/04carr.html

Basically, older folk think the thing is a hatchet job on Mark Zuckerberg, and that he comes across as a tragic figure. Younger folk seem to think of Zuck as a hero, who pulled off world-changing accomplishments despite rich idiots trying to bring him down.

I think the difference is not actually "old" and "young", but "technical" and "nontechnical". People who like technology and understand it (this does not include Aaron Sorkin) are awed by Zuck's accomplishments, while those who do not understand how hard it was instead focus on his personal failures. Adams, who is in his 50s but firmly understands technology, reinforces this view.

ghshephard• 16 years ago

Absolutely - I came out of the movie thinking it was one big puff-piece to Zuck and Parker's accomplishments, and wondered what the rationale was for slamming Eduardo so badly. My actual thinking was "No way was Eduardo that lame in reality".

I was amazed to find out that some viewers came out of the movie believing that Zuck had been portrayed in a negative light - I was almost wondering if we had seen the same movie.

I think it's not actually so much technical vs non-technical, as it is awareness of what it takes to build a company from scratch. I've been in the valley for 14 years, and I can share _dozens_ of stories where world-class engineering teams put their sweat, blood, and tears in 80 Hour work weeks for 5 solid years and came out with absolutely nothing (monetarily) to show for their effort beyond a salary. Watching Sean and Mark pivot on _precisely_ the correct elements, while Eduardo fumbled, or otherwise disengaged, just emphasized how important constant flawless tactical AND strategic execution are.

okaramian• 16 years ago

Zuckerberg's family wasn't exactly poor, and he went to Harvard. Framing this as like a "rich vs. poor" movie is pretty inaccurate.

I think that there is a lot of moral ambiguity in the movie, which is why I dug it.

slantyyz2• 16 years ago

Not sure that I buy into the "technical" and "nontechnical" argument. I'm middle aged and technical and while I -respect- Zuck's accomplishments, I can definitely say there's no hero worship involved.

The focus on his personal failures is to be expected, and it has little to do with age or technical awareness. Zuck is at the top of his field, so everyone loves a bit of schadenfreude when it presents itself.

I remember that people used to get their hate on for Marc Andreesen once upon a time.

gruseom• 16 years ago

people used to get their hate on for Marc Andreesen

Now that you mention it I remember that too. How perceptive of you to note the similarity. In both cases, garden-variety schadenfreude was multiplied by their massive success.

Incidentally, not one of the successful people I've known thinks this way.

jsiarto• 16 years ago

The one thing I really appreciated about the movie was the accuracy of the computer monitor shots and dialogue about servers/hacking. While pretty basic Apache config stuff, It's nice to see a respect for the technology.

gecko3• 16 years ago

Indeed. There was something wonderful about seeing not just real desktop shots, but desktop shots with the correct contemporary hardware and software. Mozilla-the-app, Emacs 19, thick crappy Dells. Just a nice break from Hollywood effects.

AdamTReineke• 16 years ago

My brother noticed that they had a Mountain Dew can accurate to the time period.

rwhitman2• 16 years ago

One thing I really liked was that the purchase price for the domain on Network Solutions was historically accurate - back then they were still charging $34 for a .com domain..

bambax2• 16 years ago

> Normally the writer's craft is so obvious that it buries the art. When the art buries the craft, you have something special.

This kind of formulation is upsetting because art and craft are the same thing (in many languages they're the same word, too). If you can't see the "art" "behind" the craft, then the craft is poor. The whole purpose of craft is to hide itself.

Now, the craft is usually so poor that we made a whole other concept for "good craft", and that is "art".

It wouldn't be a problem if "art" was just a shorthand for "good craft", but then it took a life of its own, and became associated with miracles, "gift of God".

- - -

That said, to me, "the best movie I've ever seen" is A Few Good Men, by the same Sorkin. I can't wait to see this one!

dtf• 16 years ago

I disagree. Craft is skill. Art is expression.

joshuacc• 16 years ago

That is what the word art came to mean post-Romanticism. Pre-Romanticism, the distinction was made between art (craft/skill) and genius (inspiration). See Critical Theory Since Plato if you're interested in reading how past thinkers approached artistic creation.

bambax2• 16 years ago

You can't express yourself if your skills are poor.

You're right that someone who has nothing to say will create artifacts of low value; but I would argue that expression is a function of one's mastery of the craft.

There is a recurring theme in PG's essays about how computer languages affect how you think and therefore, what you can say using them. This is also a common theme in the "suits vs. geeks" debate; if you can't code, how can you imagine what code can do?

In general the (philosophical) jury's still out on whether language predates thinking or the other way around; but it's a fact that all great "artists" produce their best work after many many years of practicing and perfecting their craft.

agentultra• 16 years ago

I just don't like the contrived marketing of the film. People should be able to draw their own conclusions from the characters. Instead the conclusions are shoved down their throats "punk, genius, billionaire."

Honestly, I didn't find anything "punk" about the film nor do I think he was a genius.

The lottery is proof that millions of dollars doesn't make you smarter.

pchristensen• 16 years ago

I agree. (all these observations are about movie Zuck, not real Zuck)

He's not a punk, me's more like someone who has been bullied, pushed around, and ignored his whole life and he's not going to take it anymore.

He might be a genius, but that's not what's special about him. It's his determination to succeed at any cost. Lots of 19 year olds are geniuses, but most know when to quit.

Sure he's a billionaire, but there was only one line in the movie where that was even relevant (An extremely juicy line, I might add). He was after power, success, and influence much more than he was about money.

I couldn't decide if the movie portrayed him as a sympathetic villain or a tragic hero. Probably more like a real life complicated person going through an amazing journey.

AndrewMoffat2• 16 years ago

I couldn't decide if the movie portrayed him as a sympathetic villain or a tragic hero. Probably more like a real life complicated person going through an amazing journey.

I liked that too. A lot of the dynamics and relationships weren't very black and white at all, which made it that much more engaging and realistic.

masterponomo3• 16 years ago

For me, it's a close second to "Swordfish" for movie depictions of computer programming (at least the way I do it at home).

AndrewMoffat2• 16 years ago

I don't really see how that could be. Zuck was using emacs, wget, and PHP is plausible ways to accomplish things that a tech-savvy viewer would see as realistic. In Swordfish, Jobson was visually programming a "hydra" matrix-textured rubiks cube and dropping "logic bombs" into the DoD web login forms.

masterponomo3• 16 years ago

I did say "a close second".

quux3• 16 years ago

While getting a blowjob, IIRC.

I mean, come on... that's only happened to me a handful of times.

technoweenie• 16 years ago

What about Trinity's port hacking in Matrix Reloaded?

http://camworld.org/archives/001066.html

Keyframe• 16 years ago

It's just a movie trying to cash-in on a facebook phenomenon. Guy made a website that was popular among a certain clique and spread out like a wildfire. There's nothing genius about his "hacking" abilities (I'm pretty allergic to what is stuffed into that term on this site)... he made LOTS of money, geek with money - tension, drama. the end.

I don't get it what is there more to it, except for the fact that most of the people here would like to be that guy, because they are trying to enter the tangential business space he is in.

nirai• 16 years ago

Received 100% from Rotten Tomatoes top critics: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-social-network/?critic=c...

Never seen that happen before.

quux3• 16 years ago

Toy Story 3 did that too.

pauldino• 16 years ago

All the Toy Story films have 100% Top Critics ratings, in fact.

julian372• 16 years ago

Plenty of films with that rating. Just a few off the top of my head:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/citizen_kane/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/godfather/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chinatown/

(Note: I haven't seen The Social Network and I don't mean to imply that it is comparable to the iconic movies I have listed above. That said, the more reviews I see trickling in, the more it seems like it.)

davidw• 16 years ago

I guess he's never seen "Army of Darkness".

spitfire• 16 years ago

THIS is my boomstick!

mikeknoop• 16 years ago

Our of sheer curiosity, how would you compare "The Social Network" with "Pirates of Silicon Valley"?

quux3• 16 years ago

Hmm

Social network has superior directing and writing IMO. But they are similar in many respects.

PoSV simply tells the story in a pretty straightforward way, while TSN is structured more as a search for the true story. It's structured as a bunch of flashbacks from the depositions of Mark, Eduardo, and the Winklevoss twins. Each party tells their version of things, and as a character says at one point, 15% of typical testimony is lies, the remaining 85% is exaggerated.

The movie doesn't try to take sides, and leaves it up to the viewer to decide who was right and wrong (if anyone.)

philwelch2• 16 years ago

Nearly all of the technical merits (writing, acting, production values) are better with The Social Network, though the leads in Pirates do well. Pirates tells a much broader story, and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates make more interesting characters. (Woz and Paul Allen are played straightforwardly, and Ballmer is recognizably Ballmer.)

It's quite notable that Pirates tells a broader and more interesting story than The Social Network despite The Social Network being far more fictionalized.

If you're looking for parallels to contemporary startups, The Social Network is a bit more on point--Pirates goes farther back into the founders' backgrounds and forward into the lives of Apple and Microsoft as established companies. But both are still great.

tel• 16 years ago

I haven't seen The Social Network. I'm fully willing to believe that it is a fantastic movie, and, just based on collateral evidence, I'd even put some money down on Sorkin doing well in the Academy Awards. I will probably see it very soon.

Nevertheless, I still think that this post is mostly evidence that Scott Adams hasn't watched a lot of classic movies that have stood the test of time. To state that The Social Network stands with the greatest movies of all time (as Adams' statement could have meant if he'd seen a lot of them) is one thing, but I take it as pretty unlikely that it surpasses the whole field. Unless, of course, the "whole field" he's implying it compares to is pretty small.

So, cool, I'm glad he liked it. I'm also not sure what knowing his opinion earned me.

jonasvp• 16 years ago

Lawrence Lessig has an interesting take on the movie: http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/78081/sorkin-zucke...

He basically says that it's old media (Sorkin and Hollywood) casting new media (Zuckerberg) in a bad light, compared to the good guys - the honorable and respectable lawyers (of all people).

The real point of Facebook's success according to Lessig: "Instead, what’s important here is that Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-a-billion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) asking permission of anyone. The real story is not the invention. It is the platform that makes the invention sing."

pdx• 16 years ago

IMO, Facebook did well for two reasons, brand recognition and phased roll-out.

After it started taking off at Harvard, you had the Harvard brand, which is a pretty big deal, to encourage uptake at other colleges. By going college by college, critical mass was easier to achieve, as it didn't need a lot of people, it just needed a lot of people at your particular college, to encourage the non-early-adopters to join in. By the time it was actually competing with MySpace, etc, for non college users, it already had a sizable user group in the key demographic, and as I recall, the "started at harvard" branding was still to be heard.

rwhitman2• 16 years ago

A friend the other day called it "The Godfather of our generation". I don't really get how they got that out of it.

I came out of the theater kind of depressed. And worrying a lot about lawyers. I've always wondered what it feels like to be someone who works in a hospital and then comes home to watch a hospital drama on TV. Now I know. Its kind of weird.

mattmaroon3• 16 years ago

You almost get the impression that the author has just never seen a good movie before. Almost everything he said could be applied to any top film maker. Coens, PT Anderson, Wes Anderson, lots of others. If all you've seen are summer blockbusters I can see how you might be wowed by good writing and lack of special effects.

Sorkin's good for sure, sometimes really good, but he too has his weaknesses. For instance the fact that every character has the diction of a Harvard English professor and the wit of George Bernard Shaw.

hugh3• 16 years ago

he too has his weaknesses. For instance the fact that every character has the diction of a Harvard English professor and the wit of George Bernard Shaw.

Is that really a weakness? Strict realism in dialogue generally makes for pretty poor drama. Shakespeare's characters talk like nobody has ever talked, but his plays would not be improved by sticking in a bunch of "umm"s and "ahh"s and repetition and "y'know" and repetition and, uhh, stuff like that, y'know?

mattmaroon3• 16 years ago

Yes and no I suppose. When it's unrelenting, ubiquitous (politicians and waiters) and in everything he ever composes, I'd consider it a weakness.

Of course you don't expect anyone to talk exactly as people do, with umms and ahs and all that. But Steinbeck and Hemingway (and in film, most of the people I mentioned in my original post) prove that you can write great drama and dialogue with a good degree of realism.

Also many people did speak similar to Shakespeare's characters, though of course with less rhyming since they weren't poets and Shakespeare was. There's a good explanation of that here "http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_people_really_speak_the_way_th...

Goladus2• 16 years ago

Good point but to nitpick the analogy-- Shakespeare's dialogue is actually quite varied. Consider the exchange between Hamlet and Osric, for example. Hamlet mocks him mercilessly for trying to use big words. Contrast Hamlet's tasteful, intelligent, and poetic use of language vs. Polonius's elaborate, convoluted phrases. Even the two gravediggers-- one is clever the other is a bit slow.

runcible_spork2• 16 years ago

Movie or no, "They trust me. Dumb fucks." is the core of Facebook.

runcible_spork2• 16 years ago

Prediction: In six months, if this movie is remembered at all, we'll all realize that it's actually a pretty stupid movie.

lovskogen• 16 years ago

I think this movie was issued by Facebooks PR department, to further embark the notion that Facebook is 'the only social network'.

Scott Adams: The Social Network, "The best movie I've ever seen"

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