Friday.....America.....Can I Be Your Friend

We no longer live in cities and on farms, we now live on the Internet. Those were the words of former Facebook president Sean Parker in the just released film The Social Network. Parker was one of the bad guys in this riveting film on Mark Zuckerberg's founding and building of the phenomenon.  I originally wanted to view fifty Facebook sites before writing on the topic but that was before I found out those days are in the past and one must now first request to be a friend and I probably couldn't find fifty people who want me as a friend (I refer you to my past blogs.) So I read on the topic. Most of what has been written is on security issues but there has been a lot written on the concerns of a narcissistic culture that tries to collect friends as if they were mini-fans. Groucho Marx was on target as he once told a starry-eyed Dick Cavet who proclaimed himself a "big fan," If it gets any hotter, I could use a big fan. If the film is accurate, it was the college students who first poured themselves into these lazy, pseudo friendships and now fiddle as Rome burns. Now, it seems, everyone does it, 500 million at last count. Half of the film takes place at Harvard. College students haven't changed that much since I was one. Once again, if the film is accurate, Facebook was founded on lies, arrogance, the pastimes of the elites and a predatory nature towards those, of whom I was a poster boy, who feel that the world is on hold as they sow their wild oats. The story revolves around Zuckerberg's alleged stealing the idea of Facebook from other Harvard students and the lawsuit that followed. Then Harvard President Larry Summers, of bailout and stimulus fame, is pictured as being just as observant and discerning as he was in the Obama administration.  The Social Network is a good film for law students. The audience at the showing my wife and I went to seemed to be fans of Zuckerberg and Facebook for they gave laughing approval to his sarcastic retorts and I doubt if the message of greed, power mongering and narcissism sunk in. A review in today's Wall Street Journal disagrees with my take on this shallow pastime as Joe Morgenstern simply claims to be "cautious"on Facebook  and relates the possibility that Zuckerberg may have been aware of the "deep human need for friendship at a time when physical and spiritual isolationism was on the rise." I contend that adults are simply auditing the college lifestyle through Facebook and proving that they are just as susceptible to a gimmick and a promise that the youth are, only it's not a four year gig adults are wasting time on. Time may tell whether the deep human need for human friendship pushes Facebook aside and convicts it of being friendship only with oneself. The character who Mark Zuckenbeg is accused of defrauding confronts him at the pre-trial meeting of lawyers with I'm the only friend that you had. It's more than ironic that this individual with one friend has taught the world how to develop friendships.