How to Get Ahead
(or Lawyer Up!)
[spoiler alert]

I saw "The Social Network" and found it entertaining and thought-provoking, as everyone has been saying. The actors were all good, especially Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake.

Basically, Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg whose Harvard friend Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield, gives him a computer algorithm that allows him to create a software program Facemash which gets him noticed by the Winklevi twins and their friend Divya Narendra, who hire him to program their dating program. He uses some of the ideas from their dating program, his Facemash program, and some start-up money from Saverin to start his Facebook site.The ever-more-popular website gets noticed by Justin Timberlake's Sean Parker who lures Zuckerberg out to Silicon Valley and connects him with venture capitalists. And the website becomes more popular. Keep in mind, though, that Saverin did give him the original algorithm and the original start-up money.

Some random thoughts: Facebook caught on because of the aesthetic design which lacked advertisements and the relationship status on people's profiles. It caught on despite the existence of similar websites like MySpace and Friendster, and became a success because of the various efforts of Mark Zuckerberg and his business partners. No one can take that away from them, but the movie does portray Zuckerberg screwing over his friend and business partner Saverin. Saverin was duped into signing away his stake in the company, so I guess the morale of the story is one should have one's own lawyers look over these sorts of contracts even if it involves a contract with a "friend."

The characters seem real because they have both likable and unlikable qualities. They're complicated. Garfield's Saverin was the most sympathetic in the film, although you could see how Zuckerberg could be annoyed by his frequent mentions of his father. Also, the movie seems to say Saverin's focus on advertising was the wrong way to go for Facebook and Zuckerberg was correct to follow the business advice of Timberlake's Parker who among other things connected Zuckerberg with venture capitalists and suggested he change the name of the site from The Facebook to just Facebook. Parker and Zuckerberg also had an endearing desire to "stick it to the Man," or at least to stick to people who were patronizing and disrespectful to them. Maybe it's the adolescent boy in me who finds that trait appealing, because the movie also shows how that trait can lead people astray. Also, Parker and Zuckerberg obviously have other psychological "issues" for all of their business savvy.

The movie posits the possibility that Zuckerberg set up his businesses partners Saverin - via the cruelty to a chicken - and Parker - via a police bust - which really would have been Machiavellian, but ends up suggesting that he probably didn't. One of his lawyers* advises him to settle a lawsuit because a jury might think he had indeed set up his business partners to get them out of the way, because of some unethical and malicious behavior Harvard had disciplined him for before Facebook was up and running.

In my previous post, I had a quote where David Carr and producer Scott Rudin want to divide the views on Zuckerberg into Tragic or Heroic. Why not be dialectical and describe him as both? Or can the Tragic encompass the Heroic? Zuckerberg can be a visionary, perfectionist, tough, driven workaholic who got lucky and still be a flawed, unethical asshole.

Update: In his article on how the movie ignores the importance of "network neutrality," Lawrence Lessig writes

To his credit, Sorkin gives [Zuckerberg] the only lines of true insight in the film: In response to the Winklevi twins' lawsuit, he asks, does "a guy who makes a really good chair owe money to anyone who ever made a chair?" And to his partner who signed away his ownership in Facebook: "You’re gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?" Friends who know Zuckerberg say such insight is common. No doubt his handlers are panicked that the film will tarnish the brand. He should listen less to these handlers. As I looked around at the packed theater of teens and twenty-somethings, there was no doubt who was in the right, however geeky and clumsy and sad.

My guess is that Carr, Rudin and Lessig can identify with Zuckerberg in that they have screwed over some Saverins of their own on the way to success.

Lessig happens to be a professor at Harvard Law School and the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. He's right about net neutrality and the chair-making analogy, but I don't see what's ethical about misleading your business partner about what's in the contract he was signing. Saverin wouldn't have signed it had he understood what he was signing. In Lessig's view it's acceptable to screw over a sucker? I realize a lot of businesses operate this way - not to mention whole industries like Wall Street - but is it moral?

Is that good business ethics to lie to your business partners? Evidently it's good business. Marx was right about how capitalism reduces everything to the "cash nexus" which is why America is such a litigious society. At one point the old money Winklevi twins are at odds about suing Zuckerberg over intellectual property theft. One twin doesn't want to sue because "that's not how things are done at Harvard" which is a nod at the old aristocratic traditions and codes of honor, a vestigial feudal frame of reference. The twins' partner Divya Narendra doesn't just want to sue, he wants to hire the Sopranos** to "beat the shit out him" which is the logical conclusion of Lessig's social Darwinist ethics. Of course Zuckerberg could in turn sue Narnedra for damages.

The director David Fincher's Fight Club took a jaundiced-eyed look at late 20th-Century consumer capitalism. The Social Network is a much lighter, if more realistic take on business in the 21st century. He deserves an Oscar.

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*played by actress Rashida Jones, who dated Obama's longtime speechwriter Jon Favreau (she's single now). A fictional Harvard President Larry Summers has a funny scene. Another co-founder of Facebook, Chris Hughes, helped the Obama Presidential campaign set up its social networking site. And of course Obama went to Harvard Law.
** As the Italian mobster in the Coen brothers' film Miller's Crossing says, "no one's got ethics these days."