Who's Real on the Internet?

What gets put on the internet never gets lost.  Nothing truly disappears.  And all it takes is a few clicks and your life is revealed for everyone to see.  The internet completely revolutionized the conception of community, culture, and social network.  No longer are people we connect to and communicate with solely the people we can physically run into, send notes of paper and ink, or have one –sided relationships with across the airwaves.  Now communication becomes a two-way path that stretches across the globe.  As Mark Zuckerberg’s lawyer incredulously remarks in The Social Network “Bosnia, they don’t have roads, but they have Facebook”. 

            The Social Network delves into the website that revolutionized how people interact with one another.  And by doing so with a fictionalized account of a true story, the movie reveals the true power of putting a personality on a screen.  In some ways, the computer allows us to become more than our real selves, to choose how we want to be perceived and do what we want to do.  And in other ways we lose control of our own image, as the real Mark Zuckerberg lost his to Jesse Eisenberg’s affectless version. 

            The Social Network cuts from image to image in a rapidly building montage as Zuckerberg smirks and sums up life in this new world: it isn’t a matter of who sees it, but “who are they going to send it to”.  The Internet. It moves fast. It hurts. It heals. It allows a socially awkward kid desperate to both rebel and fit in to create something that will make him known.  Make him remembered.  For someone who does not always understand how to interact with people, Mark has a keen sense of what the people want: knowledge, fast and personal and all in the comfort of wherever they are.  And yet can the complexities of human persona and relationships truly be captured by a ranking algorithm written on a dorm window or a relationship status and a few words on a Wall post?  Can everything be created on the web or does there have to be some real world connection to anchor a person? 

No matter what image you post as your profile pic or what you type for your “about me”, real interactions can still permeate into the viral universe.  What happens in the real world gets put on the internet and what gets put on the internet has consequences in the real world.  Zuckerberg’s attempt to friend his ex-girlfriend and his repeated refreshing of her homepage radiates the coldness of their real life relationship; Facebook becomes both a means to connect with those lost and a portrayal of how impersonal and distant the world has become.    It is too simple to only say that Facebook has severed all human interaction or that it has miraculously connected all people.  The Social Network looks behind the glowing screen; it sees both the positive and the negative of new media and in a kind of meta way, reflects it.  Like the internet, it’s not clear who is good and who is bad: each character is flawed, sympathetic, right, and wrong.  It doesn’t matter that they are on a screen or are portraying a fictional account; it doesn’t mean it’s not real it’s just not the full story.