Tuesday, October 5, 2010

THE facebook movie.

Among other things (like watching General Conference, which was glorious) I saw the new movie The Social Network this weekend. Although my hopes were admittedly high, I was fully expecting it to be more than a little hyped up. To my pleasant surprise, it far surpassed my ambiguous expectations-I was excited to see it, but I had no idea why. While watching it I got this surreal feeling like, this is one of those things that changes everything, and it happened/is happening in my lifetime, and I'm watching it on-screen. Weird.

And then I felt kind of sad. The movie has a distinctly heavy tone. Mark Zuckerburg's character never really captured my sympathies, and billions of dollars later, he's left relatively friendless at the top of a company that thrives on social networking. Ironic. And then I thought about how many other relationships have taken a turn for the worst because of sites like Fbook. If left to my druthers I would have spiraled into a deep funk of thought for the rest of the night. Luckily I was with good friends, and a bowl full of Japanese tart yogurt later I had sufficiently snapped out of my social networking quandary.

I think the key, as always, is balance. And of course, using technology to enhance life and all of its elements, relationships first and foremost, and not to replace them. A significant portion of my new job requires me to get cozy with social media, which I spent the first part of my post-college life trying to tiptoe around. I didn't want to network socially online and I sure didn't want to have to tweet about it. Well, just this last Friday, I made my first little twittering, albeit anonymously via my company's profile. It was strangely exciting. It motivated me to create my own profile, which I did, and when I got to the part where it was time to send my first tweet into the atmosphere, for maybe the first time in my life, I had absolutely nothing to say! "Here I am world" or "Hey guys, sorry I'm late" were my best ideas. I guess I don't do well under pressure. Still waiting for something to come to me. I hope I'm not twitter-blocked for long...Stay tuned.

But to my original point, whatever it was, I guess what I'm trying to say is that in spite of heavy and potentially depressing themes, I really enjoyed the movie. It made me think about stuff, ironic and socially relevant stuff. And, I maybe find the lead actor strangely attractive. And, as motivating as that movie SHOULD be-I mean the sheer marvel of what one person can accomplish with only a 1600 SAT and Harvard education OR the amount of money said students can make by suing each other, is simply awe-inspiring (insert winky face here). Probably the most thought-provoking take-home is best summed up in a little tweeting by none other than Jimmy Fallon:

"It's about what one person can achieve, when they're not distracted by Facebook."

Jimmy, touche'.

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