By John C.

David Fincher’s The Social Network has been getting ‘friended’ by critics since the first screenings, and the film opened this weekend to strong box office returns.  On its way to a Best Picture nomination, it is, of course, the brilliant and controversial bio-pic of Mark Zuckerberg who created the ever-popular social networking site Facebook.

In the opening scene of Fincher’s film, Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend and goes on to drunkenly trash her on the internet.  She later informs him that the internet isn’t written in pencil, it’s written in ink.  The message taken from this is the very problem with social network sites.  Information and thoughts can be freely uploaded to the internet without a second thought. Which is one of the reasons why lead actor Jesse Eisenberg didn’t even have an account before getting the role.

Since its launch in early 2004, as a networking platform initially only for Harvard students, Facebook has become a phenomenon.  Instead of exchanging phone or email people are more apt to just say ‘Facebook me.’  But Zuckerberg – the creator of ‘friending’ – was nearly inept at social skills in real life.  A conclusion drawn from watching the movie is that this could have been due to having undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome.  Facebook seemed like a black and white way of interpreting the gray areas of human interaction.  The website was born out of jealousy, due to not having many friends or being considered ‘cool.’  The problem is, internet friends are known only by avatars and exchanged messages, which are the themes brilliantly touched upon in the current cautionary tale Catfish.

In the entertainment world, social networking sites can be used as a valuable source of viral marketing, but in some cases the internet can prove harmful to movie-going, just as Napster was to the music industry.  Why get together and go to the theatre when you can just illegally download the movie and electronically connect?  It does save time and money, but it defeats the point.  Now with Blu-ray technology you can connect with other viewers through the internet with BD Live – a function I haven’t even turned on.

In the recent high school comedy Easy A, Thomas Haden Church plays an English teacher who wonders aloud why this generation is obsessed with documenting every little thing they do.  In a need for every action to be remembered, we are sharing so much information that relevance slips between the cracks, and by amount of content nearly everything slides into oblivion.  But due to the nature of the internet, everything remains in print.

Like anything, social networking sites are perfectly fine in moderation.  When used correctly they can even be a lot of fun.  But the problem is, Facebook is a false network of connections, as we rarely ever personally connect.  If we could connect to anyone in the world online, would we stop feeling the need to personally connect at all?  In a dystopian view of the future, the feeling that anything we needed was just a click away would be enough for us.  Like in Pixar’s brilliant WALL•E, we would ignore the people sitting beside us, opting instead to chat with them through the screens in front of our eyes.

I personally don’t use Facebook, which is surprising coming from someone who’s main method of contact is email, has an active Twitter account and runs a website.  I’ve checked it out and am versed enough in it’s culture to fully understand it, but when people need to know where I am they don’t need to see my updated ‘status,’  and if I want someone as a friend, I don’t need a little blue button to make the first move.

Maybe the characters seen in the movie aren’t exact to life, but I do feel it to be an accurate depiction of this generation’s obsession with social networking, right through to the pitch-perfect final scene.  No matter your personal feelings on Facebook, it’s undeniable that The Social Network is one of the best movies of the year.