the anti-social network
If you know the picture you’re probably already aware of the story and, though I did steal the title, here’s a slightly different spin on it with a little more context.
In 2003, a couple of years before Herr Zuckerberg (allegedly) had the idea of stealing Facebook off the Winklevoss twins, he launched Facemash. It featured photos of students side by side, and requested viewers to vote on whom they thought the more attractive. Needless to say, the site was regarded as no more than a pick-up site that lent itself to the risqué and ignominiously closed down by the authorities, tout suite. The entrepreneur is on record of admitting he was a bit of a jerk but even this wasn’t an original idea, merely a blatant copy of ratemyface, hotornot and fitsort. I suspect Mark’s not kept awake too often by the thought that it’s also not a million miles away from Tinder or Grindr but at least his lack of innovative thought & social perception makes me feel a whole lot better about myself.
Fast forward a few billion and he now rules the world. But he’s still more than up to the task of acting a bit of a jerk. Or even a lot of one.
Earlier this month an author/journalist was banned from Facebook for posting the admittedly shocking & horrific, but globally iconic photograph of Kim Phuc, in which the naked and terrified Vietnamese girl is pictured running screaming from a US napalm attack. It singlehandedly turned popular opinion against the American War (as it’s rightly called in Vietnam) where the administration had chosen the world’s weakness communist state to go pick-on. However, Zuckerberg described it as transgressing the rules governing pornographic images, and not content with just the individual, went on to sanction many more, including Norway’s largest newspaper. Please take a few seconds to study the photograph and look at the faces of the two principal protagonists. The boy could have acted as the model for Edvard Munch’s The Scream and if you see anything pornographic in Kim then you’re already on the sex offenders’ register. Saucy snap it ain’t. The only thing hot about this picture is the napalm covering 35% of her body and with his ‘previous’ you’d think he’d be able to tell the difference.
So, the all-pervasive Facebook can do as they please and attempt to act as some form of moral arbiter of, not only the present, but also the retelling of the past. They should be delighted in their influence and you’d think that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander? But no, these titans of technology don’t necessarily practice what they preach and routinely pack their maturing offspring to the olde worlde Waldorf School, where all screens are banned and t’internet non-negotiably prohibited. A case of drug dealers avoiding their own product me-thinks.
