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As Facebook Takes a Beating, a Brutal Movie Is Set to Make Things Much Worse
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- lr 16y agoSorkin is a fantastic writer. Some of the best TV shows of the past 12 years (The West Wing, Studio 60, Sports Night) were written by Sorkin. When I first heard about Sorkin doing a Facebook movie I was dismayed. However, now, given all the things that are going on with Facebook, I think it shows he has an insight beyond most (this movie has been in the works for quite some time now).
- rue 16y ago(Also, the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" is definitely worth watching if you have not seen it.)
- trafficlight 16y agoI did not like that movie. It felt like the movie was building the whole time and then abruptly ended. They were trying to start a war and then all of a sudden the war was over.
- dejb 16y agoShould you add spoiler alert to this your post?
- trafficlight 16y agoI don't think so. I didn't give away anything more than what was in the trailer.
- seunosewa 16y agoIf that's a spoiler then the movie must be 'twist movie'. It may be more important to warn people about it!
- covercash 16y agoYeah, those are some of my favorite shows (I watch Sports Night whenever I stay home sick). Sorkin only wrote the first four seasons of West Wing which is why they're really the only ones worth watching.
- parenthesis 16y agoWhilst the fifth season of the West Wing was a little shaky, I certainly enjoyed the sixth and seventh as much as the Sorkin era seasons.
- boucher 16y agoThe fifth season is mostly awful. The seventh season picks up a bit, but with the things they did to Toby's character, and with the incredibly lame "live" episode, it's hard to pretend it lives up to the first four seasons (each of which won the Emmy for best drama).
- kmfrk 16y agoThe seasons are, however, noticeably different from the Sorkin ones. Some find it to be better, worse or all the same. I have to admit that they felt subpar, but obviously not downright bad.
- mattmaroon 16y agoHe's kind of a one-trick pony though. Every single rapid-fire exchange of dialogue in every show (always while walking) can be summed up thusly: Guy A: I don't want to talk about x. Guy B: I wasn't going to mention x. Guy A: Seriously, I'm not in the mood for x today. Guy B: That's fine, that's not what I came here for. Guy A: Good because if you even bring up x I'm going to stab you in the nether-regions. Guy B: Fine no x. Guy A: So what did you want to talk about? Guy B: I had a question for you about x. There you go, just repeat that 15 times per show between different combinations of 2 characters who are walking and you too can be Aaron Sorkin.
- gaius 16y agoThat is some laughably bad dialogue in the excerpt. Girls have no problems whatsoever with dating assholes...
- madair 16y agoStinky implications: it portrays Zuckerberg as a borderline autistic, entirely ruthless conniver Those dangerous autistics....bring your children inside!
- dfranke 16y agoAlso, how many autistic sociopaths have you ever met? Those two traits just don't go together. I'm autistic and can recognize autistics very quickly. I've met Zuck face-to-face and didn't get any of that vibe from him at all.
- queensnake 16y ago| how many autistic sociopaths have you ever met? Those two traits just don't go together. Well more like, probably, that autism /neuters/ the sociopathy. You wouldn't have the skill to exploit people. Even more likely, they're both just rarities; someone with both would be rare^2.
- clemesha 16y agoHoly shit, this Facebook situation is turning into a full-on witch hunt. Mostly the intense criticism is warranted, but I feel as though a lot of levelheadedness is starting to go out the window.
- joezydeco 16y agoMaybe the public finally realizes all these titans of the tech scene (going back to Gates, Jobs, Ellison, etc) are deep deep down just another bunch of cash-driven assholes like the rest of the business world. The media got swindled by putting them all on pedestals. (Wired, you're the latest guilty party by putting Zuck next to Gates on the cover). Time to knock a few down.
- DaniFong 16y agoAs with everyone who's ever moved civilization forward. They think they're better than us! Let's go back to the caves.
- joezydeco 16y agoFacebook claims 500 billion minutes a month is spent on their site. That's roughly a million man-years. I don't see a lot of civilization-advancing going on with Facebook, however.
- celoyd 16y agoI dislike Facebook for many reasons, but I think there can be a lot of value in idle socialization. It may be encouraging people to express themselves, to respond civilly to other opinions, to keep in touch with acquaintances, and so on – and while these may not be civilization-advancing in the way of things like highway systems or space exploration, they strengthen the foundations of a healthy society. I’m not saying Facebook is necessarily a net benefit for society, but it’s also not a total waste. If nothing else, I’d rather people were going slackjawed in front of an interactive screen than in front of the TV.
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- jsm386 16y agoIf you want to read it yourself: http://wiscreenwritersforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Social-Network-The-by-Aaron-Sorkin-May-28-2009.pdf http://wiscreenwritersforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/S... All 162 pages. edit: Ironic quote on page 62, which actually exists in the Harvard Crimson: Zuckerberg said that he hoped the privacy options would help to restore his reputation following student outrage over facemash.com, a website he created in the fall semester. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register-for-new-facebook-website/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register...
- paraschopra 16y agoThanks for sharing that old article. It had one interesting nugget: >While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the intention of generating revenue.
- sireat 16y agoThe script is a fascinating read, very biting and sharp. "a little wget magic" - Sorkin must have had some techical advisors.
- res0nat0r 16y agoI love amid all of this uproar on HN and other tech sites approximately 0.00002% of facebooks user list have actually cared enough to cancel their accounts. This will blow over next week when Gizmodo steals new hardware from someone else.
- samd 16y agoExactly, and Facebook knows this. Real change will take competition, and competition will take years to grow.
- res0nat0r 16y agoThey know they are getting a lot of flack for it, but really? I actually like having these fine grained settings, I don't let any of my coworkers see any of my pics or status updates, it is extremely nice being able to set such fine tuned views. Don't complain about your privacy when you don't understand how to setup your account imo.Also this is like amazon, does anyone actually shop at bn.com? Amazon was there first and still the best, a 2nd site to this arena just ain't gonna ever come close to the same user base.
- nitrogen 16y agoThose fine-grained settings are nice, but Facebook appears to be slowly eliminating them one by one. Originally it was possible to control who saw your work and education info, now it's public only. By the way, Facebook is the second major entrant in this space (the first being MySpace). It's almost always possible for someone new to take a big chunk of a market, given enough time and resources. See Firefox+Chrome+Safari+Opera vs IE as an example.
- jteo 16y agoAnyone remember friendster? ... My point exactly.
- skinnymuch 16y agoHow is Friendster not the first? Friendster > Myspace > Facebook, each got a ton bigger than the previous one.
- neurotech1 16y agoOne thing that annoys me is how often someone is portrayed in the media as borderline autistic, or having Aspergers. Borderline Personality disorder or Narcissism would be closer to the mark. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism When I worked around more therapists(I worked as a qEEG tech) it became apparent that some are the worst offenders when it comes to "inability to respect social norms"
- inboulder 16y agoNot that I disagree, but "inability to respect social norms" is basically part of the definition of Borderline Personality disorder or Narcissism, so saying as much is basically tautological.
- barrkel 16y agoBasically that's what he was saying: that Aspergers or borderline autistic are basically less accurate descriptions than BPD etc.
- neurotech1 16y agoThe "inability to respect social norms" is more an issue for the therapist than their supposedly Asperger's patients.
- philwelch 16y agoOne thing that annoys me is internet comment threads speculating about the mental health of people the commenters have most likely never even met.
- zeemonkee 16y agoThere was a psychiatrist that was hired by the US govt in WW2 to analyse Hitler. Despite never having met him, and not being a military man, the psychiatrist (I forget his name) predicted Hitler's strategy for the rest of the war - and the eventual suicide, having brought Germany to ruin. So it's not always necessary for an analyst - a good one that is, not an armchair amateur - to have met their subject in order to perform a successful analysis.
- philk 16y agoI don't trust Facebook but to be honest I trust sensationalist Hollywood dramatizations even less.
- mortenjorck 16y agoThe general public, though, tends to be rather the opposite. Toward both.
- trevelyan 16y agoThe article doesn't even mention that the director is David Fincher. That alone makes it a must-see.
- marcusbooster 16y agoOn IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/ Starring Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker!
- jrockway 16y agoSo, an obscure movie is going to convince people to leave all their friends behind? Yeah, I bet... If anything, Facebook should do something like this themselves, to maximize advertising revenue. If you place a product in the movie and advertise on Facebook, you're getting every demographic :)
- chegra 16y agoHey anyone get the feeling that we are being played by the media. There might be some legitimate privacy issues, but is it this bad or over hyped for an upcoming movie? Let's be critical. I have posted a time-line of diaspora success: http://chegra.posterous.com/time-line-for-diaspora http://chegra.posterous.com/time-line-for-diaspora What I want to do next is to investigate their dna. Who are the people that first got this going? What are the connections? Did readwriteweb have a connection with them. How about the nytimes? I could be paranoid, but my intuition says dig deeper.
- metamemetics 16y agoThe comment[s] section on that article is gold. These damn "chatlines" just make me want to run my sentences together in rage.