The Social Network

The story of the mind(s?) behind the Facebook phenomenon.

It is undisputed that the rise and rise of Facebook has been the business success story so far this century. In fact, it is almost impossible to believe that as recent as 2005 or 2006 people's lives carried on without dull "status updates", wall comments, "friend requests" and all the rest.

Whether a touch of genius or a cunning business plan that expertly rode the gravy train of technology, Facebook became the popcultural phenomenon of the Noughties practically overnight.

That is why The Social Network is the must-see film of 2010.

It may be little to write home about in cinematic terms and it may not be the most dramatic of films, yet it remains the first detailed visual history of the man behind Facebook and the puzzling controversy that followed his first few years in business.

Most ironically, The Social Network highlights the fact that the same massive network whose goal is to bring people together was actually conjured up by a bloke whose social skills were like the lovechild of Morrissey and Greenberg or, if you like, Jeremy Clarkson and David Starkey (apologies for the revolting image).

The story begins in 2003. It's the middle of those days when the internet was still finding its feet, with projects floating about and tons of potentially lucrative businesses rising and flopping one after the other (think Napster, geocities or various dot-com failures).

It's around that time Harvard University student and socially inept Mark Zuckerberg (Jessie Eisenberg) creates a fairly cruel website called FaceMash, which is based on male students voting which of two girls presented at a time is more attractive.

While Zuckerberg is punished and scorned for his idea, his amazing computer skills catch the attention of other people on campus (the Winklevoss brothers) who were trying to develop a social network.

In the meantime, Zuckerberg himself approaches fellow student Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and tells him of his plan for "Thefacebook", an online social networking website exclusive to Harvard University students.

It is exactly the timing of Zuckerberg's plan that will cause him a headache or two in the future, with the Winklevoss brothers later suing him on the grounds that he may have nicked their idea.

An interesting subplot is also the arrival of Sean Parker (interpreted by Justin Timberlake), the mind behind Napster and, ultimately, the person that will cause a rift within the core group of people behind the Facebook project.

Any more would constitute a spoiler.

Let's just say that director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac, Panic Room) manages to keep the energy up throughout and delivers flair and suspense with an incredibly effective use of flashbacks and backstories. Expect an Oscar or two to land his way.

Ultimately, a really good film.

Maps and Legends

D.C. Harrison on the bogus Facebook story about England tops being banned during the World Cup and the meaning of nationalism.

[This is a guest post]

Mark Twain knew what he was talking of when he said "A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on". I was reminded of this by the latest farce of nationalistic pride to sweep the nation.

It's been well covered in many other places, but to recap: Croydon police sent out memos to several pubs advising them how to curb anti-social behaviour this summer. One line mentioned banning football tops. This is already policy in a fair few bars in Manchester, at least. However, this got warped by a certain tabloid rag into a ban on England tops during the World Cup.

In no time at all, a Facebook campaign was launched stating that England tops were to be banned to avoid offence to immigrants and the like. Yes, that old chestnut. Mercifully, I refuse to engage with any social networking sites, but it would appear it's still going strong despite all evidence to the contrary. Indeed, it would seem the truth is struggling to tie it's laces on this one.

I've never quite understand patriotic fervour in any big way. 30 years ago, two people got it on in a town in the North of England. Nine months later, this screaming jaundiced mess was dragged into the world. I didn't get much of a say into any of that.

Yet, I'm grateful for the incredible luck I had in where I was born. Sure, I can moan about just about anything but I also recognise I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. There is no real chance I am going to starve to death or do without the basic essentials needed to survive.

If any, it's these things we should drop to our knees and thank blind luck for being born in Britain. Instead, tens of thousands of people express rage against other people for a reason that doesn't actually exist.

On the flipside, I can understand patriotism in some forms. I've been to Estonia several times, and can appreciate why they express their nationality so much. It's a young country, and it's people have had many years under the rule of others. It makes sense that they need to embrace their new found freedoms.

But here? I don't see it so much. Unlike Estonia, there's no 'real' English people in any ethnic sense that I can make out. I can't understand who the English Defence League are looking to defend against. If we're going to celebrate Englishness, then let's make it because the vast majority of us get to live with a roof over our heads and clean water coming through the taps.

D.C. Harrison blogs at The Tedious World.

The latest Daily Mail lie

A new chapter in the Daily Mail's weird obsession with Facebook.

The Fail completely making stuff up is hardly news, really.

This is interesting, however, because it's in line with the tabloid's morbid obsession with Facebook. I'm not the biggest fan of it myself, but the tone adopted by Britain's worst tabloid each time the obscure, evil, conspiratorial thing called 'the cybernet' is mentioned is just the stuff of legends.

Seriously. In the space of a few months, the Daily Mail - the paper claiming to be Britain's moral bearer - has published the following crap:

- Facebook can give you cancer, "a doctor claims".

- Facebook can harm children's brain (probably, but no less than reading the Daily Mail would).

- Facebook is at the root of suicide and bullying. Because neither existed before, of course.

- Facebook is to blame for friendship addiction amongst women (WTF?)

Plus of course, loads of stories about paedos, cheating, knifing, killing, BO, you name it. All of them, naturally, to be blamed on Facebook.

Today the Daily Mail had to publicly apologise for reporting that "a criminologist posing as a teenage girl on Facebook was inundated with contacts from men seeking sexual favours". As the Independent reports:

"The article by former police detective Mark Williams-Thomas carried the headline 'I posed as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook. What follows will sicken you'. But in today’s newspaper, the Mail admits that Williams-Thomas was not using Facebook at all, but an entirely different and so far unspecified social networking site".

A spokesman for Mark Williams-Thomas said that the article was credited to him even though the whole thing had consisted of a telephone interview.

"He has never, ever said it was Facebook. We have told Facebook that Mark never said in any way shape or form that it was Facebook and it couldn’t be because you are not able to do that on Facebook", he added.

Needless to say, the article has obviously been removed from the Mail website.

UPDATE: More news on the subject from Simon Owens at Bloggasm.

Human Nature

How can so many members of the public display such a penchant for servitude and submission?

Contribution by Stan Moss

When I first read (and then wrote) about Billy Bragg's "NoBonus4RBS" campaign two days ago, I was expecting to read all sort of feedback online.

What shocked me however, is the length which we're prepared to go and the straws we're desperate to clutch at in order to (subconsciously or not) justify our subordinate position.

Let's start from the actual Facebook campaign. This is what someone called Duncan wrote:

"In order to make our money back RBS needs to have a competetive edge, one that it would LOSE if they had to cap bonuses. Imagine asking Manchester united to improse pay restrictions and how loyal tdo you thing their players would be?"

This is based on the usual assumption that huge bonuses are essential if a company want to retain good employees. A logical twist you only find (on such a massive scale) when banking executives are trying to cover their backside.

Why not apply the "competitive edge" maxim to shop assistants, teachers, soldiers or you name it? Would that be sustainable? Thought so.

Not to mention that the analogy with Man Utd doesn't have a leg to stand on. Man Utd is not propped up by the taxpayer. End of. We would have no right to interfere with Man Utd and their salaries. RBS is a totally different kettle of fish: with the state owning 84%, the bank owes its whole existence to the taxpayer.

And this in line with all sorts of people coming up with rolls, handsprings and somersaults to justify the unjustifiable.

The comments on the Daily Mail website are just stunning. Here, as if by magic, the topic is no longer RBS, the megabonuses and the gigantic bailout. No. The focus becomes Billy Bragg's wealth.

"Never seems to mention his £1 Million beachfront house in Doreset though does he?????",

writes a chap from Slough, his observation so acute that the fact that Bragg's earned his money without a state bailout eluded him completely. As for bikerboy from lancashire, this is what he has to say:

"another champagne socialist who as soon as he makes a fat pile of cash for himself by singing about the poor down trodden masses goes to live as far away from them as possible ie large detached walled gardened house in the countryside".

There is plenty more, but you get the general idea.

In short, what is it with our inner servitude that, whenever we are presented with a chance to improve our social conditions or reduce arrogance by a weeny fraction, some of us start clutching at the unlikeliest straws in a way that simply perpetrates the existing status quo of privileged and minnows?

And this is the crux of the matter. I can understand why a banker would want to cling onto his years of binge and act as if he was entitled to loadsamoney by rights, regardless of performance.

But to have ordinary members of the public (the same people who will have public services slashed as a direct consequence of the biggest bailout since the Ice Age) engage in industrial amounts of sawdust and planks dispensed with one logical ricochet after the other is frankly depressing.

Keep obeying the big people then, slave, and don't forget to remain where you are unless you're told otherwise. Oh and...Parade, REST!

Rage Against the Machine win Xmas chart battle

Up your high-waisted arse, Simon Cowell!

After weeks of speculation Rage Against the Machine's Killing In The Name has finally been announced as this year's Christmas number one.

This has been the first time when, thanks to a campaign launched on Facebook, some life was put back into the charts after half a decade of X-Factor death lock. A spontaneous group called 'Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No.1' was set up "as a protest to the X-Factor monotony" and "Simon Cowell's latest karaoke act being Christmas No.1", urging people to buy the band's 1992 song Killing In the Name.

Multi-millionaire media mogul Simon Cowell had lashed out at the campaign calling it "stupid", "cynical" and "dismissive". Conversely, stars such as Shirley Bassey and Sting recently criticised the enormous impact programmes such as the X-Factor are having on music, not least the fact that the contestants are not allowed to sing their own songs and are "aping pre-existing stereotypes of what singers should do".

Rage Against the Machine announced they planned to donate some of the proceedings to charity. In the last few days guitarist Tom Morello had expressed satisfaction at the campaign saying "There are a lot of people who don't feel represented by [the X-Factor] and this Christmas in the UK they're having their say" and that "[the X-Factor] puts forward a particular type of music which represents a particular kind of listener".

Their victory represents a vindication for the millions of Brits who are fed up with being told that they're 'cynical' and 'boring' for resenting a programme that is allegedly "just a bit of harmless fun".

It's five years now since the X-Factor was steamrolled into the country's living rooms and maintained remarkable ubiquity on both TV and radio as well as in the press.

Far from simply expressing 'what the public wants', Simon Cowell's media circus has bullied the country's music tastes into submission by ramming the safest and most pre-packed brand of schmaltzy pop ever known to man down everybody's throat. The scale of the X-Factor cannot be compared to anything that happened before to British music.

Not to mention the noxious effect on a whole new generation brainwashed into thinking that the X-Factor's corporate might is the be all and end all of music.

Tonight news however indicate that the tide, at last, may be turning.

The downfall of the Attention Span

I'm having problems concentrating. It's been months since I last read anything that isn't online, and I fear I may no longer be capable.

Would it be terribly DailyMail-esque to say that I agree with what Ben Macintyre wrote in today's Times ('The internet is killing storytelling')? That a decade or more of internet and electronic addiction is drastically reducing our attention spans?

For instance:

"Addicted to the BlackBerry, hectored and heckled by the next blog alert, web link or text message, we are in state of Continual Partial Attention, too bombarded by snippets and gobbets of information to focus on anything for very long."

I check my email and start msn. Hyperlink, click on it. Oops shit, my facebook status and have a quick browse at other statuses. Twitter. Link. Endless article on the Independent online. Too long. Write properly mate. Right click on blogroll. Blog statsies. Send a txt msg. DTV with 25 channels. Flick through them. And over again. Anyone reply on that message board? Refresh. Google it. Wikipediarit. And imbd it too for good measure. Tumblr. Write properly, Deborah Orr! Stick a song on the MP3. Flickr. Daily Mail home page just for a laugh. Re-check facebook status. Youtube. 2-min video on news.bbc.co.uk. Scan that picture. Oh, I haven't checked e-mail yet. No, I have actually. But not the other email address. Refresh the inbox, just in case...

You know what I mean, don't you?

And I also believe Macintyre is right when he quotes an author called Nicholas Carr:

"What the net seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation,” [Carr] wrote. “My mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swift-moving stream of particles".

Reduced attention spans. And, personally, I think it's true. Which isn't to say that it's all bad, far from it. For one thing, since the internet I've been writing much more often. It's also immensely easier to access information, which in turns means your brain won't sizzle for that long if you can't remember a word, a fact, anything. Whoever missed the penalty at Euro 96...? Just check online and bob's your uncle.

But. But. But. I've noticed I've become less patient with films. I'll be honest. If they don't get straight to the point within ten minutes I get tetchy, which was never the case before. I'm way less patient with books as well. I'm having problems concentrating. It's been months since I last read a newspaper that isn't online, and I fear I may no longer be capable.

I can't read a bleedin thing without my eyes twitching towards the open tabs at the top every ten seconds. And thank fuck I'm not into computer games at all, otherwise you could add another massive distractor to the equation.

And I think this is reflecting at all levels. The way TV programmes are filmed- hysterical, fastforwarded, crammed with pop ups and clipped-to-death, with the longest frame tallying 2 seconds. Almost as though it was assumed that a steady narrative would prompt us to turn over and check another channel. Or go back online.

Also:
I have not been bitten by a warewolf; Letter to a film student

On social ineptitude

Is Facebook affecting our social interaction?

Robert de Vries in the Times wonders if the rapid rise of Facebook is having a noxious effect on children's brain. Instant gratification through a line on the screen, the notion of growing up with little one-to-one 'real life' interaction (with "the trouble of interpreting body language, facial expressions, or tone of voice" replaced by a 'wall post'), the shortening of attention span. Is it just scaremongering or have those claims got some validity?

The writer points out that TV has been the subject of similar criticism "practically since its invention". And yet, for all its ills, the TV never had such a permeating effect on one-to-one interaction. Forget a person in their twenties or thirties or more who discovered 'social networking' and added it as a diversion to their existence. You have to consider that the newest generation is at risk of knowing no different than Facebook-centred social exchanges. This is what some people on the BBC website said about it.

I have not been bitten by a warewolf!!!

FaceBook, the new refuge of the socially inept

"Social network" is very 21st century. Just as a decade ago you'd have scratched your head at the sound of 'frappuccino', 'metrosexual' and 'ladette', you'd have also recoiled at the combination of "social" and "network" in the same expression. Too redolent of a Peter Mandelson-sponsored DSS initiative, perhaps. In principle, a "social network" is a great idea. Try and tell anyone you don’t have an online account with MySpace or Facebook and you'll be labelled a Disco Vicar for life. MySpace may be a bit passe', but Facebook is most certainly wicked. You can upload photographs of your last holiday, talk about how much you don't care and -above all- stay in touch or re-establish contact with long lost friends. Fantastic. A web-based 'This is Your Life' that signifies the end of "I wonder what that prick I went to school with is up to", now replaced by a more informed "look-at-him-in-his-wedding-suit-he-seems-to-be-doing-well-for-himself", or "ha-ha-my-ex-from-ten-years-ago-has-turned-into-a-right-minger". You can literally unearth people back from Year 2 and, in theory, keep in touch.

However, in line with human nature, people have to turn everything they touch into a bewildering tacky mess. Some people think the internet and Playstation generation are going to turn out less socially skilled than their predecessors. A look at one of those social networks and the chances of proving that argument wrong are lower than Wolves' likelihood of a victory at Old Trafford. Facebook has become the new refuge of the socially inept. You may be in awe of having been added as a "friend" by someone you last saw in 1995, but a sense of unease will soon come upon you as they won't be able to reply to a simple "what are you up to now" or "do you still live in…" question. Any attempt to a basic online conversation is dampened by a whirlwind of "invitations", except they're the most useless, irritating, impersonal ones. This morning I clicked on one and it read: "Dear victim, you've been bitten by John! Click the Start Biting Chumps button to become a warewolf and start biting other chumps". What?! Does that sound braindead to you? I don't know, because also "Matt has just thrown a sheep at you", and "Rebecca as just bought you for $3,000". I don’t wanna be bitten by a bat or bought, Rebecca; just say something! Answer me!…How the hell are you????

I mailed Steve if he remembers the mess of Fresher's Week ten years back but as weeks go by without a reply, it's quite clear my question unearthed deep discomfort in his subconscious. Strange cos in the meantime Steve himself has inundated my Facebook mailbox with a "Warbook" notification, a "What Sex Position are you" application and, last but not least, a "Pillowfight invitation". Call me humourless and bitter, but why I would want to have a Pillow fight online, simply, eludes me. And Andy, I asked you how your new job was, I didn’t request an "Album Rack" application! And if you decide to check Tara's profile, you may want to book a day off. Their send-mail button or even their photo album are drowned in a bamboozling ocean of pointless "applications" that are the epitomy of social ineptitude: "You're a Hottie", "Pick You Up", "What Drink are you?", "What Vegetable are you" (why would you want to know if I'm a carrot or a courgette?), "Tiz Me" and…lo and behold…even a "My Starbucks" application, in which you send imaginary drinks to bestest "hottie" "trendsetting" mates you'd carefully keep at an arm's length if it was the real world. Any excuse to say nothing.

When Facebook was created, each profile pages featured a "Wall" section in which people could leave messages everybody could read. That wasn't enough. As Facebook gets more popular the scroll button on your mouse is working overtime as you get sweaty palms negotiating your way between Wall, FunWall, SuperWall, GraffitiWall, MegaWall and Another Brick in The Wall. And, being a British thing, you can be sure there's a BoozeMail section too. Thank god you can't get pissed online.

So here's what I say. If anybody out there is bored enough to have figured out the difference between Poke and SuperPoke, please do us a favour, delete us from your Friends list.