It's Good To Be An Asshole.

David Fincher telling Mark Zuckerberg’s story was the only reason I watched The Social Network. David Fincher is the man behind superb films like Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac. All his films have a great screenplay and precise editing which makes the whole experience almost error-free.

The screenplay has been adapted from a bestselling book called The Accidental Billionaires.

I haven’t read the book, but I did watch the movie. Jesse Eisenberg has brilliantly enacted Mark Zuckerberg as a sly, shrewd, heartless and a con man like entrepreneur. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a loner who has just Eduardo Saverin as the lone friend at Harvard, whom he allegedly cheats.

As the film ended I just couldn’t stop thinking about Zuckerberg.

•        He is the youngest billionaire in the world and has no ‘friends’ and owns a website where people have hundreds of ‘friends’.
•         He was ruthless in his conquest of making facebook the biggest social network in the world.
•         His idea taking shape in reality drove him to work day and night.
•         He didn’t mind being in the grey area.

Unfortunately, most of the people will end up believing that he was an asshole and crossed every limit to achieve his dream.

The Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra alleged that Zuckerberg stole their idea from their concept of a Harvard.edu social network. I don’t think so. It was a lame idea! Like any other cry babies with no substance, they managed to get a US $65 million payout.

Zuckerberg allegedly cheated Eduardo Saverin off his equity stake in the company. Today Eduardo owns 5% of facebook. Most people label Zuckerberg as an asshole for this precise reason that he back stabbed his lone best friend by cheating him. But going by the portrayal of Saverin in The Social Network, he was a worthless CFO and did not deserve the original 30% stake. His only contribution was the start up money. Zuckerberg was a visionary, not Saverin.

Why am I ranting about Zuckerberg’s antics? The answer is because we need to give a little thought to the underlying philosophical question of good and bad and right and wrong.

We need to understand that good and bad and right and wrong are relative terms. There is no absolute. There are some obvious wrongs like, murder, but sometimes murder can be relative and can be termed good. It all depends which side of the fence you are sitting. For example, a policeman killing a terrorist is not considered a murder by the law. Similarly the terrorist organization killing a policeman is not a murder. For both the party, it’s good riddance of the other ‘bad’ party. Did you get my point?

So this way all good and bad and right and wrong is relative.

And then there are people who are perpetually in the grey area. For them nothing is right and wrong. They are the rebels who cannot conform and can point out the whites (good) when the society tells them that it’s black (bad).

Right at the start, Zuckerberg is shown to create facemash.com, where he hacks into girl students’ profiles and asks the viewers to rate them on their ‘hotness’. Eventually when he is presented in front of the disciplinary committee and is asked to make an opening statement in his defense, he says that he has already apologized to all and he would like some recognition for his work. He says that he has pointed out some gaping flaws in Harvard‘s security system.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Also, Zuckerberg is shown to be a very hardworking, diligent and passionate guy. This is a very important trait that a lot of people missed. It was probably suppressed under the weight of  the display of his asshole-ness.

Every great entrepreneur has a similar ‘My way or the highway’ attitude. Other tech entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison to name a few are known to be ruthless since their young days when they weren’t world changers. They just had an idea to change the world and their attitude that got them where they are today.  And yes, they were and still are hardworking and passionate about what they do. 

The world is a worse than the jungle. These people know that they need to be ruthless to stay ahead in the game. They want to change the world with their idea. If they really gave a fuck about what would the world think, then they wouldn’t be the people they are today. As Nike says, ‘Just Do It’, they did it and we just keep on thinking…

Had they been thinking about rights and wrongs, they would have been writing some blog or reading it! (I just couldn’t help slapping myself here!)

Fight Club - A Lesson To Live

Yesterday, late night, I was watching one of my favourite film starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, once again! It's an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's literary novel of the same name; FIGHT CLUB.  I still have to read the novel though. By the way, the film is considered one of the best adaptations of a novel.

This film / novel is a piece of art which makes you think about deeper issues of our lives. I think you should read the novel or watch the film if ..... :

• If you're a common man 
• If you're trapped in the fake reality of security
• If you think culture is a phenomenon to fuck your happiness
• If you're living in a world with shit load of material possessions that you don't know why you bought?
• If you have been 'educated' in schools then colleges then B-schools (Is there really value addition in your life)
• If your life has been 'guided' in a pattern that lives of our parents have been, i.e. go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, be a loving parent, educate your kids, ask them to study well and get a job and get married and ........ you know the cycle continues.
• If you're working for some corporation with bosses hovering like eagles waiting for the right moment to peck some flesh off you. (and if you're not, eventually most of you will)
• If you have lost the 'real you'
• If you want to be free.

The novel / film appeals a lot to men because the issues discussed is very close to their heart and all men understand it without exchanging a single word. Women may never understand it. 

The novel / film will enlighten us of our entrapment by vicious corporations. I somehow felt that its a direct slap on American capitalism. It's a slap on the readers / viewers face for being a moron and leading a pathetic life where we feel we're in control, but actually are not. It will make you realise that only when you accept that you're going to die, than will you really start living. 

There's a fantastic scene where Brad Pitt pulls out a guy working in some restaurant and points a gun at his head and asks him what he wants to do in life? He replies, he wanted to be a veterinary doctor. Brad Pitt takes his license and lets him go and tells him that he'll check on him in 6 weeks whether he is on his way to achieve his dream or not. If he isn't, he'll kill him! The poor guy runs and the next scene shows Brad's empty pistol! And then he tells Edward Norton that, that next day's breakfast will be the poor guy's tastiest breakfast, ever! He will learn to live! (Only after disaster can we be resurrected)

The basic premise is one needs to hit the abyss to rise up to the highest point. Unless you haven't lost everything, you will never know your true potential. The lower you'll fall, the higher you'll fly.

The film is very very intelligent and appeal to people  who think on their own and can question the status quo. If you are one of the kind, where you never question and do what you have been told, avoid the film and the novel, as you will not understand it and get a rude shock!

It has some quotes which will hit you as bad as a guy being hit by a speeding truck! I'm leaving you with a set of quotes which I feel, will make you think and hopefully read the novel or watch the film.

• We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

• Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. Working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we dont need.

• You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world. 

• You do the little job you're trained to do. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don't understand any of it, and then you just DIE.

• Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need.

• At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.

• Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.

• You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.

• If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't. 

• The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.

• Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.

• Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.

• You know, the condom is the glass slipper (like Cindrella story) of our generation. You slip it on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night, then you throw it away. The condom, I mean. Not the stranger.

• We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.

• The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.

• This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

The best one from the novel is the last

• Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.