Why it is hard for old people to fully understand The Social Network, a.k.a. my own short review of the Facebook movie.

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I admit the title of this post sounds extremely ageist. But we all know that different movies appeal to different demographic groups. (I, for example, would never enjoy a Twilight movie). The purpose of this post is merely to demonstrate how the audience’s understanding and appreciation of The Social Network – a movie about one of the most incredible social phenomena of the past decade – depends critically on the audience’s own participation in the phenomenon. In other words, non-Facebook users or light Facebook users (who are generally of older age) will have no trouble understanding what the movie is about, but only regular and heavy Facebook users will understand what the movie truly is.

The post is partly inspired by the following YouTube video, a review of The Social Network given by film critic David Edelstein, whom I do not think fully understands the movie.

(Click here to see the video. I couldn’t embed the video here, since embedding is disabled by the uploader. If you want, you can watch the video in a separate window and come back to finish reading the rest of this post.)

There is no doubt that Mr. Edelstein gave an honest and thoughtful review, and I have no intention to pretend that I know better than Mr. Edelstein. But I do want to point out some arguments made by Mr. Edelstein about the movie that I do not completely agree with.

• Mr. Edelstein calls The Social Network “a very dark, very entertaining modern business saga”.

It is true that this movie is very much about the various business decisions involved with the founding of Facebook and the many legal actions that soon ensued. But as Mark Zukerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) repeatedly pointed out in the movie, Facebook should not simply be a business. And it is not. When you have 500,000,000 avid users from more than 200 countries, you stop being a business. When your user base makes up the third largest country in the world, you stop being a business. And if one 1) compares that number (500,000,000) to the world’s Internet population instead of the world’s total population, 2) removes from the denominator Internet users from China (which has the largest number of Internet users in the world but unfortunately bans Facebook), and 3) thinks about how much time we spend on the Internet, one will inevitably start to see what incredible and frightening control Facebook has over our life - not just our individual life, but our collective life. And I think this is a point that most people do not fully comprehend when they think of Facebook or The Social Network. Facebook is not another McDonald’s or Wal-Mart. It is not even another Microsoft or Google. Those are all business phenomena. Facebook, on the other hand, is a social phenomenon. Business phenomena succeed through expansion. Social phenomena succeed through absorption. Businesses try to break into well-established communities. Facebook creates its own community and lures people in.

• Mr. Edelstein thinks The Social Network is “basically about a guy who creates an online social network”. While he does think it is a really good movie, he still “longed for more about Facebook users”.

First of all, The Social Network is NOT “basically about a guy who creates an online social network”. It is about the guy who created the social network. This point has already been clearly established by the paragraph above. Secondly and more importantly, contrary to Mr. Edelstein’s belief, this movie is not about Mark Zukerberg. It is not about how Zukerberg became the youngest billionaire in the world. Instead, it is about how we – the 500,000,000 Facebook users – allowed Zukerberg to become who he is. It is a movie about us. Zukerberg created Facebook not just because he needed it, but because he knew we needed it. He knew we wanted it. We want to share with the world what is going on in our life. We want to check out that cute girl/guy from chemistry class or from the other department, without fear of being rejected. We want to broadcast our relationship status. We want to demonstrate our exclusivity by posting photos of our drunken selves from that party last night, or our trip to that exotic village. We want the world to know which prestigious university we go to, which famous company we work for, which awesome city/country we were born in, which alternative artists we listen to, which cult movies we are a fan of. We are exhibitionist and “share-ist” who do not want to just see the world, but also want the world to see us. And Facebook allows us to do that in the most glamorous, instantaneous, yet casual and nonchalant way. I highly doubt that all of the above statements apply to all of us. But I do think it’s possible that all of them apply to some of us and highly probable that some of them apply to all of us. I also believe that inside most of us – especially the younger generation born and growing up in the Internet age, there is a mini Mark Zukerberg. (Creepy!) Whatever we cannot get in real life, we get it through the Internet. And The Social Network captures that mentality in the most ingenious way.

• Peter Travers from Rolling Stone thinks the movie “brilliantly defines the decade”. But Mr. Edelstein thinks otherwise, claiming that we won’t find any of such definitions in the movie.

What then defines the last decade, Mr. Edelstein? September 11? I am going to argue that Facebook defines the decade as much as September 11 did. In the same way that September 11 created fear and disconnection between people around the world, Facebook assuaged such fear and connected people in an unprecedented way. In this sense, Facebook, together with The Social Network, provides a great example of the irony that we’ve been living with in the past two decades – we use the Internet to solve problems created by the Internet. We complained about what a messy and disorganized mire of information the Internet is. In response, Google was born. We complained about all the pirated music, movies and TV shows on the Internet. In response, Pandora was born. Netflix was born. Hulu was born. We complained about how mindless information absorption overwhelms meaningful knowledge creation on the Internet. In response, Wikipedia was born. YouTube was born. Blogger was born. Tumblr was born. We complained about the ultimate crime against humanity committed by the Internet – it made people antisocial! In response, Twitter was born. Facebook was born. In a world where a 500,000,000-member community can be created on the Internet in a matter of 6 years, being online is being social.

And I think this is where my ageist statement in the title comes into play. It’s not that old people (which I understand are never clearly defined in this post) do not use Facebook. They do. But for them, Facebook is simply not as defining as it is for the younger generation. Facebook has been in existence for more than 6 years. For someone over the age of 40, that’s 15% of their life. But for someone around the age of 18, that is 1/3 of their life. The older generation did not grow up with Facebook. The younger generation did. Therefore, when an older person sits in the theater and watches The Social Network, they are looking at someone else’s life, whereas when a younger person does the same thing, they are looking at their own life.

What was meant to be a short review about The Social Network has turned out to be a long-winded social commentary about Facebook. I guess I am now obliged to give my rating for this movie.

I give this movie