Social Network

[Isabel]

I had the chance to watch The Social Network recently, a film that depicts the events that lead to Facebook’s creation. Starting from the college life of Mark Zuckerberg to becoming involved in various lawsuits and tensions between friends, Social Network shows how amazing yet dangerous his invention of the widespread social media was. He at first creates a website that puts Harvard’s women students against each other to see who’s more beautiful, which then leads to even more serious problems such as Harvard’s internet servers going down and students feeling insecure about their looks. I think this film goes to show how damaging social media can be on people, especially regarding their self-esteem and mental health.

I’d give this film a 4 out of 5. The multiple events and flashbacks were nicely coordinated, such as how the first version of Facebook began to spread to not just Harvard students, but other prestigious universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, and soon enough to other countries. The Social Network also revealed things I never knew about Zuckerberg, such as how he ‘stole’ the idea for the website from other students, and that he left Harvard and began working in California with his newly-branded company. I also did not know that Facebook had the prefix ‘the’ in front of it, until a businessman encouraged Zuckerberg to drop it. I thought there were too many characters casted and I often lost track of where the plot was going (it jumps back and forth). In general, as someone who’s invested in social media, I enjoyed watching this film to see how ideas and thoughts sprouted into something much bigger, and eventually created one of the richest people on the planet.

[Zeeshan]

I also watched this recently as well as the Social Netowrk netifilx doc and they both have the same message. It really shows the damage of the review and our media's flaws and cons. Plus it also stars Jesse Eisenberg, perianal shy kid, and he plays it well. It does tend to jump forward and back and I'm glad you pointed that out