January 15, 2019 • 50 mins
Mark Zuckerberg Is A Much, Much Worse Person Than You’d Guess. In Episode 43, Robert is joined by Maggie Mae Fish and Jamie Loftus to discuss Zuckerberg's rise in the tech world and what makes him a huge bastard.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mmm, Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once
again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
everything you don't know about the very worst people in
all of history. And today we're talking about a man
who I truly believe is the worst person of the
twenty one century. Now, by the end of this episode,
you'll either agree with me or you won't. But to
(00:21):
join me on this journey, this odyssey, this epic quest,
are two of my very favorite people, Jamie Loftus and
Maggie may Fish. Jamie, you are yeah, you guys. You
guys should introduce yourself very quiet. That was breathier than
I was intent day for. I had to copy it. Yeah,
(00:42):
the A S. M R. Crowd's really going to appreciate
that one. I can't maintain sexy baby for what appears
will be the length of this episode. It's okay, you
know what else they're going to appreciate. That was a
beautiful A Derrito's corn Bay snack. I had better try
one myself. From our party size bag. We've got both
(01:04):
Blaze and nacho cheese. I have never tried Blaze. I'm
honestly too weak for Blaze, and I know you know,
it's been a while since we talked about Dorrito's on
the show, and for no reason that I'm willing to
talk about. Right now, we're back into one baby, so
Derritos will be accompanying us through this journey into the
heart of Mark nous. Love that moisture, sucking dust it
(01:26):
really it really distracted everyone from my terrible Mark. Yeah,
I did skip right over that and to appreciate it
that that's the beauty of Doritos. We can only let
two more fly. Unfortunately, really blew one right at the top.
Derrito's nature sin remover, I could be one over. You're weak.
(01:47):
That's your forget me now, the world's forgetting me now,
Rufie your shame with Derrito's corn Bay snacks. Anyway, almost
started Mark Zuckerberg speaking of marketing bad ideas. Okay, Mark
Zuckerberg already, Yeah, let's get into it. In the Year
(02:11):
of Our Lord two thousand seventeen, I made three trips
into the Iraqi city of Mosel. It was at that
point still partly occupied by Isis, who the locals just
called Josh. I spent many hours huddled in small rooms
with groups of Iraqi federal police and Special operations guys.
We were all hunkered down listening for the tell tale
hume of Dosh's drones, which they used as spotters for
their mortar teams. Now here's the thing about being in
(02:32):
a dangerous place like that, After a few hours of
tense anxiety, you start to get bored. And the mobile
internet and MOSEL was actually pretty good, surprisingly good, better
than it is in Los Angeles. Sometimes so periodically, when
I should have been doing literally anything else, I would
whip out my phone and check Facebook. I remember one
time in particular, I was embedded with a small unit
of guys from the Iraqi ninth Federal Police Battalion. Things
(02:53):
were exploding about a football field away from us, and
I was facebooking. A bomb went off nearby, and I
looked up from my smartphone and realized that everyone in
the room, my Kurdish fixers, my wife slash photographer, the
six soldiers we were chilling with, all of them were
browsing Facebook. Of the room was on Facebook. Now I'm
telling you this story because I want to start this
week's podcast about Mark Zuckerberg by acknowledging his genius. I'm
(03:15):
about to spend about four hours tearing him apart as
a human being, But in my opinion, he is undeniably
a brilliant man. Anyone who builds something so universally desired
and used has a kind of brilliance. And Facebook is
objectively brilliant in the same way that's say, Heroin is brilliant.
So that's my little intro. Yeah, I like it, Thank you.
(03:36):
Let's get into this ship. A lot of digital ink
has been built in the last few years about the
sundry negative impacts Facebook has had on our society and world.
I want to make it clear off the bat that, well,
this will certainly be a part of the podcast. I
tend to view Facebook as a tool, and this more
or less morally neutral on its own. Our goal here
is not to attack the social network as a concept
or make you feel bad about using it. I haven't
deleted my Facebook. It's how I talked to my family. Yeah,
(03:58):
that's how I keep an eye on my mom's uh
confusing internet presence. Yeah, a lot of parents sharing a
lot of fake news about scary things. Yeah, my mom
likes memes. You know, when we were all just sharing
goatsia around ourselves and never thought my parents would but
(04:19):
with something even grosser. My mom started doing this thing
where she'll change your profile picture to a llama and
it's some it's some old person joke that I don't understand,
and she can't explain it to me, like we do
it on Facebook, and I was like, why oh the
boomer of Italian Okay, So our goal is not to
(04:39):
focus on Facebook, but it's founder Mark Zuckerberg, who, as
I stayed at the top, I come to believe is
one of the very worst people alive on this planet.
I agree. Yeah, he usually depicted as like a robot,
like that's the way a lot of descriptions of him
will take. And I think that's unfair. I think it's unfair,
and I think it's calculated. Yeah, and it like allows
him to get away with a ship by being like, no,
(05:00):
I'm just aukward and weird. Yeah. Yeah, I just don't
get your human emotions. No, no, Mark zucker No, no, no, no, no, no,
you get it. You get it. So Mark Elliott Zuckerberg
was born on May fourteenth, nineteen four in White Plains,
New York. For all your astrology heads out there, I
crunched some numbers. He's a Torus son scorpio moon virgo,
(05:21):
ascending him what you will wow telling chart, I think
telling and powerfully erotic chart. Now Mark's father, Edward, is
a dentist. His mother, Karen, was a psychiatrist, but gave
up her career to manage her husband's business and raised
their four children, Mark, Randy, Donna, and Ariel. The business
(05:42):
was run out of their house in Dobbs Ferry, New York.
Elliot Zuckerberg went by painless Doctor Z and his motto
was we cater to cowards. It's a good dentist motto.
Good so far whatever hardcore for me. I don't know
if that would be the cowards. No. I what the
dentist up? My dr My dentists name as a child
(06:03):
was doctor Vagennie Vagennis, the Dennis Vajennie. Oh my god,
vagenis he must have never had a choice of what
he was going to do. Stay tuned next week for
the surely exciting episode on Dr Vagennis the Dentist. Don't
(06:24):
know anything else about him, but I'm sure there's an
hour of content in there. So Mark grew up comfortable,
shall we say not funk the world, rich but very
well off. Edward was a techy guy, and he trained
his son and how to use the basic computer language
on a natari. When Mark was twelve, his dad mentioned
that he wanted a better way for his receptionist to
inform him when a new patient had arrived. Mark used
(06:45):
his code in knowledge to build a program called zucknet. Zucknet. Oh,
I was swallowing water during that. This is where it
started in his view of the world, which is him him. Yeah,
no points for originality on the name. No Zucknet. And
just as a heads up, I had to type Mark
(07:06):
Zuckerberg a lot on this podcast, and I've come up
with a lot of nicknames for him. None of them
are good. May we rank them? Yes, I'm these are
not clever nicknames. I'm just gonna state that off the
bat now. Zucknett has been described as a primitive version
of Ale Well instant messenger. The receptionist was able to
use it to ping ed, and members of the Zuckerberg
family soon took to messaging each other with it too.
(07:27):
Once the young Mark had his family addicted to the program,
he started sucking with him. Here's the New Yorker quote.
One evening, while Donna was working in her room, downstairs.
As screen popped up. The computer contained a deadly virus
and would blow up in thirty seconds. As the machine
counted down, Donna ran up the stairs shouting, Mark, So okay,
(07:48):
right now, we're still in the zone where I'm like
that it could be a fun could be cute, a
cute little product. I mean, not to fast forward, but
it seems like he has never grows up. It does
seem like he never all his cheating on his final
exam via Facebook. Yeah, you can't blame him for this yet,
but given everything else, it's kind of telling because he
(08:08):
can't grow a beard, you know, It's like there's a
lot going on. He definitely never considered that. Actually, he's
even worse at growing a beard than Ted Crews. Yeah,
very smooth face. And that's the shame, because after a
shame like Facebook went through with the election, you would
expect him to drop out of public life for a
while and then come back with a beard and launch
(08:28):
a new product. That's what he wanted to do. But
it can't just like, yeah, I'll go listen to people.
The smooth, droopy face. He didn't have a beard to
wipe his sins away, and he didn't know that the
delicious taste of nacho cheese deritos could have done that
job for him. What a shame, What a heart break.
Now we Mark's brilliance was not all the result of
(08:51):
autodidactic study. When he was eleven, his parents started paying
for a computer tutor to help him develop his skills.
They had computer tutor money in the nineties. Pooter tutor,
good old fashioned pooter tutor. This pooter tutor did describe
Mark as a prodigy. I'm sure he was. One of
(09:11):
Mark's favorite childhood hobbies was to invite his artist friends
over to the house, have them draw things, and then
Mark would code video games based on the drawings. Try hard, friend,
I'm sure those were great parties, everybody drinking way too
much mountain dew. Good times. For years, I only had
a pool to offer for friendship, so I would tell
the cool girls all like, you could come to them
(09:33):
in my pool, and then they would and then they
would leave anywhere else. No, yeah, we should have learned
how to code. Damn. Yeah, then you'd have been breaking
in the friends. That's what it's all about now, being
a precocious rich kid. Mark Zuckerberg's parents shelled out the
big bucks to get him enrolled at Phillips Exeter Academy
(09:54):
for high school. Yeah, okay, yeah, I have a lot
of strong opinions on Exter. Oh I'm decided to hear them.
For some reference, Exeter currently cost its boarding students somewhere
around forty six tho dollars a year, so Mark's parents
spent roughly the annual income of an average American family
on their son's high school education. Everyone who goes to
Exit is a certified chowed. You will not change opinion
(10:17):
that I've encountered so many. Now, Exeter, if you want
to sponsor the show, why would be my We'll take
your cho But that would be very surprising. I mean
they would have to eat Doritos and then they would
be changed forever to become good people. Yeah, it's like
in that like in the nineties commercial you bite it
and then suddenly you're on a skateboard. That's what Exeter needs. Now.
(10:39):
While Mark was an Exeter, he fell in love with fencing.
I did too, right around the same time. So let's
not have any fencing jokes. How I'm out open and
then it closed. I know, I know, you're welcome ready
she was, I watched the joke fire back into her now.
Zucky Boy did well and most of his classes, but
(11:00):
his strength continued to be programming. At Exeter, he built
a program called Synapse, which was essentially a primitive precursor
to Pandora AOL, and Microsoft reportedly offered to buy the
software from him, and he turned them down. When he
went up in college, one of the stories people told
about him is that he was the kid who turned
down a million dollars from and he doesn't care about
the money. It's not about the money. Yeah, the Accidental Billionaires,
(11:24):
the book that was the basis for the Social Network,
makes a huge deal about him turning down the money.
I think it's I think that title says a lot
the accidental. I think it's easier to understand. Like Mark's
dad was rich, a ship, he was paying forty six
dollars a year. First kids college, Mark's never worried about
money a day in his life, So why would give
a big ship about a million dollars? Like, yeah, anything
(11:45):
doesn't mean anything, it's not it's not His mom doesn't
have like diabetes and like can't afford her medication and stuff,
which most kids you get offered a million dollars and
that because you're greedy. It's like, yeah, that'll change my
family's life. Yeah, but this wouldn't make really much of
a dead He'll go to Harvard either way. Fuck it. Yeah,
he's still hate rich people so much. Yeah, realized my
(12:08):
deepest fear is rich people. And I'm coming to terms
with that. Totally reasonable fear. Yeah, way more dangerous my
deepest resentment. It's not resentment because I don't want to
be rich. I wanted myself and my friends not be
scared about our lack of healthcare. Yeah, I want that,
But I don't want Mark Zuckerberg money. I just don't
want anyone else to have Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, I don't
(12:29):
want anyone to have any money. But he's giving his
money away. And also, no, he's not. Several of my
notes dig into the quote unquote charity, not charity work,
A rich person's charity. That's not a real charity. Guys,
he's an accidental billionaire. Come a break. Well, it is
(12:52):
very odd to have someone who is creating the housing
crisis in San Francisco while also using a fake charity
to pretend to help the resolve. I feel like the
CEO of Salesforce is the only rich guy in San
Francisco who's not full of shit about that. And it's like, no,
we've created a problem. We should probably pay taxes to
fix it. But anyway, Salesforce know he's the he's the
(13:22):
only billionaire in San Francisco who came out in favor
of the tax hike. To whatever, you get a point.
I still don't think you should be a billionaire, but
at least you're not on the wrong side of that
issue now. Mark Zuckerberg graduated from high school and was
accepted by Harvard. He joined the Alpha Epsilon Pie fraternity,
which is a Jewish fraternity, and met his now wife,
Priscilla Chan at one of their parties. We started talking
(13:44):
in a line to the bathroom. She later recalled to
the New Yorker quote. He was this nerdy guy who
was just a little bit out there. I remember he
had these beer glasses that said pound include beer dot h.
It's a tag for C plus plus. It's like college humor,
but with a nerdy computer science appeal. I feel so
you could just say unfunnable. He was unfuckable, but it
(14:07):
was clear that he'd be rich. It's like I can
read between these Mark could not because he had those
glasses with ship typed on. Now, Zuck quickly made a
name for himself at Harvard, and that's what he prefers
people to call him suck, is that his preferred him
(14:28):
that name. Harvard frats are not even they're not They're boring.
The excellent billionaires talks a lot about the Harvard frats,
the final clubs and shut. I'm not going to get
into that much because it's just so frustrating to talk about.
The short story is call me back when you're an
M I T. Frat. They program their own lit floors
and sometimes kill themselves during nitrous oxide. Very true, Pretty cool,
(14:52):
Pretty cool. Okay, So he quickly made a name himself
at Harvard. People, of course talked about the fact that
he'd turned down a million dollars. They also talked about
course Match, a program he built during the first week
of his sophomore year. It allowed students picking classes to
see what classes there are other classmates had picked. Now
that sounds innocuous, right, you know, yeah, nothing nothing inherently
(15:15):
bad about that idea, But it's real purpose was to
allow guys to figure out which classes the hot girls
were registered in, so that they could pick the same
class always where I am. Mark Zuckerberg's life does not
pass the Bechtel test. Come chase me, zuck zuck zuck
(15:40):
uh Mark's next groundbreaking achievement was facemash. The Accidental Billionaires
describes it as quote a website where you compared two
pictures of undergraduate girls, voted on which was hotter than
watched as some complex algorithms calculated who were the hottest
chicks on campus. A good good, good once you're in
the school, in the country. Good to know whether you
(16:01):
are hot or if you are. I'm glad you still
get to be, you know, objectified. It's fair Harvard, not
homely Harvard. True. Yeah, there was a day at Northwestern
where they had one of these two or three days
there was one. Yeah, there was briefly one at my
college as well, and it was quickly shut down. But
(16:21):
make no mistake, I tried to figure out what my
ranking was. I don't think I was on the site.
I did look for my side also, and I cried
about that. I was like, I'm not even hot enough
to register on the site. I don't know if my
college had one, but I was not sober enough in
freshman and sophomore. You do you use a computer? Which
(16:43):
makes me Yeah, your life passes the back to too
drunk to be a misogynist. Okay, Now, the pictures on
face mash came from the harp facebooks. Now, the Harvard
facebooks were databases that each residence hall kept on the
(17:04):
students who lived there. Most of these facebooks were private
and only accessible to people in that residence unit. Now,
young Mark Zuckerberg kept a blog, and because of that,
we actually have a rather deep insight into what he
was thinking while he programmed face mash. So I'm going
to read out young zuckety zuck zucka zucka loo zucks.
That was bad. But I'm gonna type Young Mark Zuckerberg's
(17:25):
thank you, Yeah eat one of those shamed to Rito's fantastic.
All right, here's Mark Zuckerberg talking about face mash PM.
I'm a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if
it's not even ten pm and it's a Tuesday night.
What the Kirkland Facebook is open on my computer desktop?
And some of these people have pretty horrendous Facebook picks.
I almost want to put some of these faces next
(17:46):
to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on
which is more attractive. Eleven O nine pm. Yeah, it's on.
I'm not exactly sure how the farm animals are going
to fit into this whole thing. You can't ever really
be sure with farm animals. But I like the idea
of pairing two people together. It gives the whole thing
a very tearing field, since people's rating of the pictures
will be more implicit than say, choosing a number to
(18:07):
represent each person's hotness, like they do on Hot or
Not dot com. The other thing we're going to need
is a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, Harvard doesn't keep a
public centralized Facebook, so I'm gonna have to get all
the images from the individual houses that people are in,
and that means no Freshman pictures. Drat, you can hear
him petting a cat. Yeah, it's also funny because the
(18:29):
way you read that, I think it's probably more attuned
to how he was actually Yeah, as opposed to in
the film where they choose a sort of Rainman type style,
were very gently put the total bullshit. But like the yeah,
(18:51):
the it sounds like he took like a swig of
off brand vodka. I think he was drinking Mr. Boston.
It was some sort of shitty beer it was. It
was like not good beer, but not terrible beer. It
was nicer than Budweiser. No, it was some weird East
Coast thing, but it wasn't y loser. I'm not disagreeing
(19:12):
with you there, And I feel like the only other
way that Andry could end would be like Also, I
came up with this idea called in cells. I also
founded another type of I'm just gonna see the world
with these ideologies crapping up now. I do want to
note that I don't think the no Freshman pictures line
is creepy the way Zuckerberg uses it, because I do
(19:34):
think that he is fundamentally the kind of guy who
would be bugged by building his creepy wank side off
of an incomplete data set. Yeah. I suspect that that's
really what's going on. He's like, I don't have all
the pictures, so we are going to get into how
Mark Zuckerberg got all of the pictures that he used
for his creepy wink side as a hand, he stole them. Wow,
what another theme that first I took him on a sidekick.
(19:56):
But first, Maggie, you're a fan of product Jamie, how
do you feel about services I live to consume. Let's
all first consume a delightful dorrito. Oh my god, that's
so good. And then let's consume these other fine products
and services that have paid us. And we're back. We're back.
(20:22):
We just had a quick little dorito break while we
appreciated all of the many bountiful blessings of capitalism. And
now we're talking about how Mark Zuckerberg got all of
the pictures for his creepy wank site. Now, the very sensible,
super reasonable privacy rules Harvard University had established to protect
the pictures and data of its students were getting in
the way of something Mark Zuckerberg wanted to do. Want
(20:45):
to do this, he was left with only one option,
only one option, break into those residence halls and steal
the data. Now Ben Mezrich, the bad writer of The
Accidental Billionaires, suspects that that's exactly what Mark did. Uh
and typically overwrought, overwritten fashion Mesrich envisions Mark sneaking into
the residence halls like a teenage tony version of Tom
(21:05):
Cruise and Mission Impossible. He admits that this is totally theoretical,
but he imagines a couple fucking in the room while
Marcus stealing the data, like and he's hiding from them
about a dorky eighteen year home. He was writing it
so that the Erin Sorkin movie would be exciting, Like
he was handing off He was literally handing off chapters
(21:26):
to Sorkin as he finished. Sorkin Also, Yeah, I mean, well,
it's like when all these people believe in the inherent
genius and you know, we should praise really really a
wild circle jerk taking place. Fincher, Yeah, and Fincher, And
it's a perfect storm of people who are looking down
on others, people who are self mythologized. Yeah, it's it's
(21:48):
a lot of people who are really good at one
thing and no better than anyone else, but think they're
really good at everything because they're really good at one thing.
It's why engineers make up most terrorists. Wow, yeah, that's true.
Look it up. I do want to say my biggest
takeaway is that Zuckerberg is smart at one thing and
is incredibly stupid at everything else. Like every other person,
(22:11):
every other person, every other person on the planet. But
like your plumber doesn't get on airs about his ability
to fix a smart watch or launch a social network.
He knows. No, I'm fine and everything else. I'm really
good at plumbing. That's great. That's how the world works.
You don't try to run for president. Yeah, I'm good
at this job. I would be terrible at fighting fires.
For some reason. I'm looking at margat Zuckerberg merch right now.
(22:31):
Just get a shirt with them. We'll come up with
a shirt ideator in this podcast. I do have in
the shirt we're coming out with Hendenburg the Oligarchy. He's
going to be one of the guys on the Flaming
Hendenberg hashtag Hendenburg the Oligarchy. Everybody they all died on blimps.
We wouldn't have these problems. So I did not find
(22:54):
The Excellent Billionaires to be an enjoyable read. But I
have to say I think a lot of what Mesrich posits,
including most of this, is quite plausible. I doubt anyone
was sucking the room. But the idea that Mark was
basically breaking into these residents also steal pictures. He got
the pictures somehow. That seems possible. Now, I broke into
a residence hall and still several air conditioners, so not
(23:14):
that hard. You can't just drop that and getting did
you need the air conditioners yourself? Dope to me? I
felt like I needed it. I was really hot. Ironically
broke into a bunch of Boston campuses that weren't mine
my freshman year of high school because I was hired
for the street team of the Social network. So I
(23:35):
snuck onto Harvard Grounds to put up posters to be
like heard of this movie? That is a deep connection.
That is a really deep connection. I still have a
mouse pad. Fantastic you have? You have like merchant you have?
So however he didn't. Mark managed to steal all the
(23:56):
pictures he needed to build his stupid hotter not clone.
Here's what he wrote on his blog before taking it live. Perhaps, however,
it will squelch it for legal reasons without realizing its
value as a venture that could possibly be expanded to
other schools, maybe even once with good looking people. But
one thing is certain, and it's that I'm a jerk
for making this site. Oh well, someone had to do
it eventually. Were we letting for our looks? Know? Will
(24:18):
we be judged on them. Yes, fucker wow. During this
he realizes that he is not a catch. I will say,
in fairness, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg ever had illusions
about that. Feel like you had to write it down
at anything. I really got to become a billionaire. Zuckerberg
(24:47):
launched the program and gave the u r L to
a handful of friends and some kids he wanted to impress.
According to Mezrich, facemash went viral without zuck really intending
for that to happen. In the first two hours, the
site logged two votes. Now that was only by like
four hundred some odd students, so everyone on Harvard sounds
kind of gross. In fairness, Mark shut it down as
(25:10):
soon as he realized it had gotten way, way more
popular than he had intended, but the damage was done.
He was holding in front of Harvard's deans to explain himself.
He admitted he'd done a bad thing, but argued that
he had also helped expose security flaws in Harvard systems,
and he offered to help fix those flaws. That's that's
the rock star moment in the film. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And that that that's how Mesrich presents it. He also
(25:32):
states that marks social awkwardness and his confusion was his
greatest defense, but the Deans had realized he wasn't really
a bad kid. Yeah, I'm gonna read I'm gonna read
a little selection from that He's just awkward. Ye don't
you feel bad for him? Just actually wants to have
sex with Yeah? Actually that's Rashida Jones is the purpose
of her character screenplay is to make sure that we
(25:54):
still like him. I mean, because she just like Rashi
and Jones like after look, said Jesse Eisenberg sympathetically, and
that like don't don't don't like the place every time
I think I actually found a Mark Zuckerberg shirt that
I want. So I'm gonna read the clip from that
Chunk of Accidental Billionaires that describes that, saying, you guys
(26:14):
are just going over because I think it's actually grosser.
The gathered Deans had looked at him and listened to
his stilted affectation, and they had realized that Mark wasn't
really a bad kid. He just didn't think the same
way other kids did. He hadn't realized that girls were
going to get mad because guys were voting on their
appearance hell Market. Eduardo and probably every other college guy
in the world had been ranking female classmates in terms
(26:35):
of hotness since the dawn of structured education. Eduardo was
pretty sure that someday some paleontologist would find a cave
drawing ranking neander tall girls. It was simply human nature. No,
it's not. That's no, it's no, it's not. Treating people
like a rotten tomatoes score is not inherent human nature. Well,
what was the first time you remember being like rated
by someone? In uh, my little fool, Yeah, middle school.
(26:59):
I'm remember there was a large period of my life
where I was not hot and then like when I
became okay looking was when someone stuck a sticker on
my butt. It was a spicy sticker from the Spicy Sandwich?
Is that that was my first like someone finds me
someone had to a chicken sticker on you. But I
(27:22):
remember there was like a hard copy circulating my fourth
grade class and it would change for a three years,
so there was like a racer marks. It is a
real thing that people will always do forever, but empowering
it in any way and easier to do. I don't
know that people who always do it forever. I think
that boys, because I can tell you I did it
as like a teenage boy. And I did it because
I grew up with media that did it too, with
like magazines, like like I didn't just come up with
(27:46):
in my head like oh what if we ranked girls
on a ten point system? Like I saw that and
read that on the Internet and then I did it. Yeah.
Face Mash was something of a disaster on the surface,
but it earned marked the attention of the winkle Boss Twins,
two young rich kids who liked rowing boats and had
come up with a brilliant idea of creating an app
called the Harvard Connection. I think the Winklevoss twins are cute.
(28:08):
They are objectively cute. They're objectively good looking guys. And
I used to try to play a character that was
the third Winkle Vos. He was like their spare tire,
his nameless trip Trip. Yeah it would be trip. It's
chippy had sex with the car. I refused to believe
(28:28):
that both Winklevoss twins have not also had sex with cars.
They haven't a money. They could have bought kit from
night Rider. That's true. The Bitcoin brothers, Yeah, they're hot.
They're hot. They're hot and they roll, no wonder Mark
hated them. Yeah, well they're hot. It's the revenge of
the nerds. Uh, you know story. So they're classic feminist texts. Yeah,
(28:53):
there was another movie I like, There's a teenage Boy,
and then watched as an adult was like, is that
that's rape? Fun film? Now? Um? The idea of the
Harvard Connection, the site the Winkl bosses wanted to make
was basically a site where they wanted a site where
cool guys in college could meet girls without having to
meet them in person. There was something called the fun
(29:15):
Bus that would ferry girls from other colleges to Harvard.
That's what they called it, the fun Bus. But they
thought that was inefficient and wasted time, and they wanted
a faster way to meet people to fuck. And that
was the idea behind the Harvard Connection. The Winkle bosses
couldn't actually cope. They were just rich guys with an
idea for a Fox site. Mark Zuckerberg came into Robert language,
(29:40):
what else do you call it? And I got nothing
wrong with a Fox site if it's another like Tinder.
Tinder was just creative so that everybody could fuck. But
a site just so that rich guys can meet girls
to fuck. That's gross, a site for everyone to fuck whatever.
I got another it's true because it's like it's like
(30:01):
a selected few getting a certain like the specific idea
that like, we're just so busy rowing boats and going
to school, what if we had a Fox site. If
a man can row a boat, he can. I'm not
going to finish that bottle at a Harvard rower once
(30:23):
from the bridge. In my defense, I was drunk at
al Jamie. I uh, you, you can't know how proud
I am knowing that, but it's super proud. So the
(30:44):
Winkle Bosses didn't actually know how to code, which is
where Mark Zuckerber came into the picture. He initially agreed
to help him with the project, and for a while
he emailed back and forth with them, but as time
went on, it slowly became clear that Market no intention
of actually working on their project. He was just stringing
the Winkel Boss twins along while he worked on his
own project, titled the Facebook. Now, the Facebook was minus
a few features the social network we all know and
(31:05):
gradually accept the existence of today. Mark did not started
on his own at the very beginning. The ground floor level.
He worked with a dude named Dwardo. Savern now Saverurren,
was a fellow Harvard student and one of young Zuck's
few good friends at the school. He came from a
rich family and had made like three hundred thousand dollars
the year before with a series of clever investments. Mark
needed Edwardo's cash to get his idea for the Facebook
(31:25):
off the ground. The original agreement was that Edwardo would
be the Facebook's business manager, while Mark would handle the coding.
Edwardo put in the first thousand dollars necessary to get
Facebook off the ground by servers and all that stuff.
With the money taking care of for now, Mark Zuckerberg
was free to build the website of his dreams. While
the Facebook of today looks a lot different from the
focused Harvard Connection website, the Winklebus twins thought Mark was
building for them, the original designed for the Facebook had
(31:48):
an awful lot in common with that idea. Here's how
the accidental billionaires described the initial layout of the site.
There was a picture near the top, whatever picture you
wanted to add, then a list of attributes on the
right side. Here you were in college, your major or
your high school where you came from. Clubs, you're a
member of a favorite quote and then list of friends
people you could add yourself or invite to join a
poke application that allows you to poke other people's profiles.
(32:09):
Were checking them out and in big letters, your sex,
what you were looking for, your relationship status, and what
you were interested in. So while Mark's vision was seemingly
more complete than the Winklevosses idea for Harvard Connection, it
came down to the same basic goal getting people, namely
Mark Zuckerberg quote. The thing that would drive the social
network was the same thing that drove life at college. Sex.
(32:31):
The Actual Billionaires is a fun book. Yeah, so, but
I don't think he's wrong about that. I think he's
I think he's nailing what these kids were going for.
They wanted a fox side kingrats to everyone like like,
I like, I guess like naive is the wrong word,
But I like really didn't think about sex at all
until much later in my life. I was like to
(32:55):
be married in the military. That was chilling. M No,
I don't think that some things I could have done
no one I knew was fucking Yeah yeah me either, really,
I guess, man, man, yeah, It's like it's impossible to
(33:15):
be an eighteen to twenty year on year old mail
and not be thinking about that way too much. Like,
not that are the focus of our media doesn't make
it worse. But you know your hormones as a man,
like that's when things are going fucking wild, so people
be horny. H virginity to a woman. Actually, now that
I congratulation. Yeah, hell yeah. Now. I could go on
(33:37):
for a while about the juvenile nature of Facebook and
his founding. They chose to hire their first wave of
coders based on the results of a drinking contest, but
I feel like they would be counterproductive. You'll get the point.
Mark Zuckerberg was a gross young adult when he first
started his social network. It has gross DNA. But none
of us are at our best when we're college sophomores.
I hope most of you didn't do anything as nasty
as steal thousands of people's data so you could rate
girls based on whether or not they were hotter than
(33:58):
literal cows. But we all do ship that we aren't
proud of at that age. I would not be declaring
Marque bastard purely on the fact that he was a sick,
horny nerd. In college. When I was eighteen, I drank
so much that I vomited on three separate strangers at
the same party, three separate occasions. When I was nineteen,
my friends and I brewed up thirty gallons of trash
cider and got a crowd of strangers so drunk that
one person vomited off the fourth story balcony of the
(34:19):
Dallas Sheraton onto a restaurant full of people. My friends
and I gleeefy heckled the patrons as they ran for cover.
There were umbrellas on the tables, and I remember my
friends shouting, those umbrellas won't save you. So let it
never be said that Behind the Bastards is a show
that judges people just for doing dumpshit when they were young.
(34:39):
I was a shitty young person too. Okay, test your boundaries.
It's fine. If Mark Zuckerberg had changed as a human
being after this, I would not be judging him based
on the fact that he wanted to make a Fox
site when he was nineteen. That's really what is so
disappointing is that like it comes from such a normal place,
Like it's pretty normal. It's pretty like mond ain't. It's
(35:00):
a pretty commonplace given the context of the time it's in,
Like none of this was like shockingly misogynist kind of
like we're not woke culture. It's not worse. He's not
like they were, Like they're definitely kids in fucking Harvard
and stuff. Who were you know, date raping people. Mark
Zuckerberg wasn't doing that. I've never heard any accusations of
anything like that. Like he was just a normal background
(35:23):
noise level misogynist for the time, horny hacker. So let's
get onto why he's really a bastard. I'm going to
brush over most of the founding of Facebook and the
sundry drunken parties that the accidental billionaires makes a big
deal about. Are hotter, super hot abs like a goddamn
cheese grater, both of them. Yeah, the short part of
(35:45):
it is market Edwardo met a guy named Sean Parker,
the Napster founder. Don't really no kind of looks like
at that point right in the movie, Yeah, you know,
he's a good man to have play Sean Parker. They
kind of he did great moment. What's that famous horrible
line that he says, like about a million dollars. What
(36:06):
about a million? You know what's better than a million dollars?
A billion? And then he like fade out. Yeah, he
just disappear. Now. At that point, Sean Parker did not
have much money, but he was an experienced tech entrepreneur
and had solid connections in the industry. It seems like
he kind of helped convince Mark to move out to
California with a couple other Harvard students to work on
(36:26):
the Facebook during the summer. Over this time, it had
spread from Harvard's campus to colleges across the nation. Mark
and his first employees wind up letting Shawan Parker crash
on their couch. The Facebook continued to grow, and Mark
made the decision to drop out of school and stay
in California, a choice I endorse for of Harvard students.
The Facebook up securing a bunch of VC money. Yeah,
get out, get out of that school. Same with Stanford,
(36:48):
go to New York. I guess I don't I don't care.
The Facebook wind up securing a bunch of VC money
from Peter Teal under the requirement that it dropped the
V and just go by Facebook because he was apparently
Sean Parker suggestion, and damned if it wasn't a good one.
No one said he was bad at branding, bad at
having weddings because he had a thirty million dollar wedding
that destroyed a forest. But yeah he had. He had
a Lord of the Rings themed wedding and he didn't
(37:09):
get permits and had to pay ten million dollars in fines.
He like us bulldozers in places that you're not supposed
to be nerd culture is, Yeah, you want to do
your fucking Lord of the Rings winding up to destroy
a forest for it? How you're someone to see? He
was point, Yeah, well he wanted to be sorrow he
saw he saw that as a Yeah, I didn't really
(37:33):
get the message trying to a whole bunch of little sorrows.
Fucking did Gero Tolkien would have been pisted him for
having a bulldozer. Not a big fan of industrial construction equipment.
You read the guy much um. Also an anarchist, but
kind of a weird anarchist. But yeah, self declared, Yeah, yeah,
he was a weird type of anarchists. A lot of
(37:55):
stuff about the Catholic Church or whatever anywhere. Yeah, showed anarchy. No,
I mean he was like, he is a good quote,
which was like, I don't think people should be in
charge of other people less than one in a million
is capable of doing the job, which is I agree.
I think I really agree with that. He lived through
World War One. You don't want a fan of hierarchy. Now. Well,
(38:18):
Mark and the Facebook's first few employees were living in
Palo Alto if they were being bankrolled by Eduardo Saverin.
He had put roughly twenty tho dollars into the company
to get it off the ground. He was also working
well in New York, trying to sell to advertisers and stuff,
putting in his time and also the only person putting
money on the line. So he's really believed in this project,
really being a good friend, but his relationship with Mark
(38:38):
got rocky. The accidental billionaires and the social network make
it look like Sean Parker got his hooks into Mark
and he and Zuckerberg started taking meetings with investors, bad
friend influence, duck innocent, Yeah exactly. They were meeting without
Eduardo's knowledge, and Eduardo reacted by cutting off Facebook's assets
to his money because he thought he was getting edged
out of the company, which is exactly what was happening. Um,
(38:59):
but diabolical teen pretty gross. Now, that's what prompted them
to make a deal with Peter Teel. Since Eduardo was
contracted to own Facebook, they couldn't cut him out entirely.
But it seems like their lawyers engaged in some complicated
legal factory. We will be talking about that legal fury
and the other people that Mark Zuckerberg sucked over who
are not mentioned in the social network because he stole
(39:20):
from somebody else too. But first, you know what doesn't
steal from anyone The wonderful advertisers who supported our program
and or show with their products indoor services, and we're
also supported. Maggie, you beat me to that delightful, satisfying crunch.
How's those blazes doing? Man? I am a convert? Does it?
Does it up a cold winter day? I like it?
(39:44):
It's like a heater for your insides. That's a free one.
Torito's people don't use that products and we're back. That's
that's ea. Actually what I always say after a solid
product and or service. Now, uh, we were talking about
(40:06):
what Mark Zuckerberg did to EDWARDO. Saverin the good friend
who invested twenty dollars in his buddy's idea and also
worked full time pretty much to try to make it
a reality, which is great friending. You'd think that would
build up some loyalty at Wardo sounds like a really
good friend. Wardo sounds like a real one. Yeah, let's
talk about how he got over. He's not in the movie, right, Yeah,
(40:26):
he's the guy who does not come across this edution
the story. I don't know anything about him. Maybe he
kills chickens or something, but maybe chickens need to be killing.
He got in on bitcoin too. I think he's rich anyway,
it doesn't matter now. Mark pretended to make nice with Eduardo,
and so Edwardo signed a contract that made it look
(40:46):
like he was getting actually thirty four percent of the company.
But this was just a bunch of complicated legal bullshit
um and the company was allowed, based on the sort
of terms of the contract, to actually dilute Edwardo shares
to weigh less than more ten percent. Savern maintains he
was cheated out of his fair steake of the company
when Mark and Sean Parker edged Severn out. They also
(41:07):
cut his name out of Facebook lore It's not all
that different from the stuff you'll hear about in Stalinist Russian.
He was basically deleted from the company history. Now. When
the social network came out, Zuckerberg attacked it for being inaccurate.
But in the years since, the emails he sent to
his lawyer around this time have come out. At one
point he asked, quote, is there any way to do
this without making it painfully apparent that he's being deluded
to ten percent talking about Eduardo, to which his lawyer responded,
(41:30):
the broad categories of legal risk are a fiduciary duty
as Eduardo was the only shareholder being deluded by the grants. Again,
as Eduardo is the only shareholder being deluded by the
grants issuances, there is a substantial risk that he may
claim the issuances, especially the ones to Dustin and Mark
but also to Sean, are a brist of fiduciary duty
later on, if not now. According to Business Insider, this
is exactly what happened. Quote Savern eventually sued Facebook over
(41:53):
breach of fiduciary duty. Facebook and Savern settled, and he
walked away with four five percent of the company. That
Steak is now worth close to five billion. So again
he's doing all right. You don't gotta feel that sorry
for Red Wirdo, but what Mark does is slimy here
now Well, the exact terms of the settlement are unclear.
Facebook was also forced to reinstate Severeian's name in the
company history. Mark also eventually settled with the Winkle bosses
and their partner in the Harvard connection, a guy named Nearindra.
(42:16):
They reportedly got sixty five million. Well, Facebook's legal team
we're working on that case. They searched Mark's computer and
came across the I M s he sent at the time.
These I M s paint a very fun and very
ugly picture of the man previously described as just robotic.
Wait do we know what his green name was? I
don't think in the type Oh maybe he got all right?
(42:39):
So made just to Ben's up. Here is one exerpt
from a conversation between Mark and a friend talking about
his real plans to work on the Winklevosses social network.
This is when he was still telling the Winklevosses he
was working on it. Friend, So have you decided what
you're going to do about the websites suck? Yeah? I'm
going to fuck them, probably in the year but he
then he then corrects, probably in the year two. Ear
(43:02):
ear yeah, yeah, the ear fuck you freaking yeah. I
can see why they won that suit or settle. Yeah.
Information that's turned up in the years since has also
shown that Eduardo's Savareen was not the only friend who
invested in Mark's website and got sucked over. Paul Sieglia
(43:23):
seems to have invested two thousand dollars into Facebook in
exchange for some steak in the finished project. Now, at
some point, Mark Zuckerberg clearly realized that his baby was
going to be valuable. He started lying to Sieglia claiming
that the project was basically dead in the water, so
that he could pay the friend back his two thousand
dollars and cut out his interest in the business. Here's
one email he sent to Sieglia in two thousand four,
while he was in California working to make Facebook. Paul,
(43:48):
I'm guessing that you don't want to talk to me,
but I wanted to say happy birthday and that I
hope to resolve our differences. I see that what I
did was wrong, and I'm really sorry that I behaved
as I did. Please give me your address and I
will mail you back the two thousand dollars for your
trouble more if it were a pair of business relationship.
Another summer is here and I still don't have any
time to build our site. I understand that I promised
I would, but other things have come up and I'm
(44:08):
out in California working during break. I just don't want
the obligation of having to answer you for not following through,
and I won't be able to the first half of
that email sounds like what my cousin texts everyone every
time he gets out of jail. I don't think I
can repair these relationships regretting my mistakes. Yeah, one month later,
Hi again, regretting same mistakes. Cycles are a bit in
(44:34):
some fairness. I never got over the mistakes that I
made at nineteen, because, like six months ago, I was
drunk in Santa Monica and I started stealing light bulbs
from the outside of bars and throwing them at my
friend's feet. Yourself away. I haven't grown up either, but
I don't have billions of lives in the balance either.
I am purchasing the Zuckerberg shut and just why don't
(44:56):
you read the front of that Zuckerberg shirt. Good Zuckerberg shirt.
It's a picture of Zucky programming as a Harvard student.
He's got a water bottle of wine glass and a
red bull and the quote below reads quote you can
be unethical and still be illegal. That's the way I
live my life. Ha ha ha oh beautiful. It gets uglier.
(45:22):
See the problem with being a tech obsessed young person
who focks over countless people to start your business is
that a lot of the conversations that prove you to
be a gross weirdo are going to come out. Here's
one Mark had with a friend after he launched Facebook
in his dorm room and eight percent of his classmates
were using the service. Zuck. Yeah, So if you ever
need any info about anyone at Harvard, just ask I
have over four thousand emails, pictures, addresses, sns, redacted friend's name.
(45:45):
What how did you manage that one? Zuck? People just
submitted it. I don't know why they quotation Marks trust
me ha ha dumb Fox? That really they Yeah. There's
a scene in the Social network where is Zuckerberg meets
um two fans and they make like idiots of themselves.
(46:09):
They like fall over each other and the point of
that scene is, aren't the people who look up to
you stupid and dumb? And that's what I think. Fincher
is very effective at communicating with his films and uh
still lionizing the main character as like, yeah, his customers
are idiots, and let's make fun of them. Yeah, they're
(46:30):
farm animals. They are the farm animals, say they do
the same thing advice, which bother anyway, as I have
very strong opinions about advice. It made me mad. It
made me mad, but I thought it did a good
job of talking about how excribble of a human he is.
Why would anyone make Dick Cheney look remotely cool right now?
I don't know. Maybe it's because I've been there and
(46:51):
I've seen the consequences of it. I didn't think he
looked cool, but I thought everyday consumer he could seem cool.
That's the that's the fun. You know a lot about
chain whereas yeah, you know that that's a good worry
to have. It's like, um, I was reading an interview
with the guy who created The Punisher talking about like
who was being told that, like police officers are putting
(47:11):
it on his car and he's furious He's like, no,
he's not a pro cop character. He's making the point
that our justice system is so fun that a lunatic
with a gun is murdering strangers at the street. That's
not good, right, Yeah, that's how we are doing cops. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Like very frustrating. Um the shirts on the way fantastic.
(47:34):
Facebook received it's one millionth registered user on December four.
It spread to high school students in September of two
thousand five, and introduced the ability to tag people. In
December of two thousand five and September two six, the
service was finally open to everyone anywhere in the world.
The stage was finally set for Facebook's blisteringly rapid growth
to the world single most dominant media organization. During this time,
(47:56):
Marcus Soukerberg grew wealthier and ever more influential, but he
didn't grow out of being a tremendous douche back. In fact,
as we'll cover in part two, the wild succiss of
Facebook turn mark from a kind of sliming nerd bro
it is something much much darker. Jamie Loftus, Oh well,
you can find me online wearing my new Zuck shirt. Uh,
(48:18):
Jamie loftus help and on Instagram at Jamie cry Superstar
and they call it, they call it the ground. I'm sorry,
Famous zuck Entity, if you want to support me, and
I'm going to be posting a picture of my ironic
Mark Zuckerberg T shirt on Mark Zuckerberg's platform any day now.
I'm really like, I'm really telling him. I'm really excited
(48:41):
he'll get the message. I think this time he'll show
him from inside his diamond bathtub filled with Christal Coward
Maggie May Fish Pubs plug. Yes, you can find me
on Twitter at that name Maze with an E because
of my dead great grandmother. Yeah. Yeah, you can find
(49:05):
me on YouTube at that same name. And yeah, I
have a podcast about friendship which you can find on
my Twitter fantastic. I'm Robert Evans. You can find me
on Twitter at I right, Okay. I have a book
called A Brief History of Ice where I injured my
friends with dangerous ancient drugs. Oh that's not your review
of the movie. No, I am kind of frustrated that
(49:26):
I'm stealing my name, which no one had ever used
outside of my book. It's a really unique title. It's
a Doggie dog world Now. You can find this podcast
online at behind the Bastards dot com, where all these sources,
many many sources for this podcast will be available. You
can find us on Instagram, the Graham and Twitter at
at Bastards pod. And you can buy a T shirt
(49:47):
from t Public. You get hoodies, you can get drinks,
you can get stickers, you can get a lotty twenty
millimeter canon branded with Behind the Bastard's content. If you
need to knock out moderately armored h yeah I do.
Who doesn't. We all need to shoot through police bearcats
every now and then, and and the te Public Lotti
(50:09):
twenty millimeter anti tank gun can help you do that.
So Public, great site. Let's go shopping and come back
for part two. Mark Zuckerberg The worst man in the Century.
Mmm, Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once
again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
everything you don't know about the very worst people in
all of history. And today we're talking about a man
who I truly believe is the worst person of the
twenty one century. Now, by the end of this episode,
you'll either agree with me or you won't. But to
(00:21):
join me on this journey, this odyssey, this epic quest,
are two of my very favorite people, Jamie Loftus and
Maggie may Fish. Jamie, you are yeah, you guys. You
guys should introduce yourself very quiet. That was breathier than
I was intent day for. I had to copy it. Yeah,
(00:42):
the A S. M R. Crowd's really going to appreciate
that one. I can't maintain sexy baby for what appears
will be the length of this episode. It's okay, you
know what else they're going to appreciate. That was a
beautiful A Derrito's corn Bay snack. I had better try
one myself. From our party size bag. We've got both
(01:04):
Blaze and nacho cheese. I have never tried Blaze. I'm
honestly too weak for Blaze, and I know you know,
it's been a while since we talked about Dorrito's on
the show, and for no reason that I'm willing to
talk about. Right now, we're back into one baby, so
Derritos will be accompanying us through this journey into the
heart of Mark nous. Love that moisture, sucking dust it
(01:26):
really it really distracted everyone from my terrible Mark. Yeah,
I did skip right over that and to appreciate it
that that's the beauty of Doritos. We can only let
two more fly. Unfortunately, really blew one right at the top.
Derrito's nature sin remover, I could be one over. You're weak.
(01:47):
That's your forget me now, the world's forgetting me now,
Rufie your shame with Derrito's corn Bay snacks. Anyway, almost
started Mark Zuckerberg speaking of marketing bad ideas. Okay, Mark
Zuckerberg already, Yeah, let's get into it. In the Year
(02:11):
of Our Lord two thousand seventeen, I made three trips
into the Iraqi city of Mosel. It was at that
point still partly occupied by Isis, who the locals just
called Josh. I spent many hours huddled in small rooms
with groups of Iraqi federal police and Special operations guys.
We were all hunkered down listening for the tell tale
hume of Dosh's drones, which they used as spotters for
their mortar teams. Now here's the thing about being in
(02:32):
a dangerous place like that, After a few hours of
tense anxiety, you start to get bored. And the mobile
internet and MOSEL was actually pretty good, surprisingly good, better
than it is in Los Angeles. Sometimes so periodically, when
I should have been doing literally anything else, I would
whip out my phone and check Facebook. I remember one
time in particular, I was embedded with a small unit
of guys from the Iraqi ninth Federal Police Battalion. Things
(02:53):
were exploding about a football field away from us, and
I was facebooking. A bomb went off nearby, and I
looked up from my smartphone and realized that everyone in
the room, my Kurdish fixers, my wife slash photographer, the
six soldiers we were chilling with, all of them were
browsing Facebook. Of the room was on Facebook. Now I'm
telling you this story because I want to start this
week's podcast about Mark Zuckerberg by acknowledging his genius. I'm
(03:15):
about to spend about four hours tearing him apart as
a human being, But in my opinion, he is undeniably
a brilliant man. Anyone who builds something so universally desired
and used has a kind of brilliance. And Facebook is
objectively brilliant in the same way that's say, Heroin is brilliant.
So that's my little intro. Yeah, I like it, Thank you.
(03:36):
Let's get into this ship. A lot of digital ink
has been built in the last few years about the
sundry negative impacts Facebook has had on our society and world.
I want to make it clear off the bat that, well,
this will certainly be a part of the podcast. I
tend to view Facebook as a tool, and this more
or less morally neutral on its own. Our goal here
is not to attack the social network as a concept
or make you feel bad about using it. I haven't
deleted my Facebook. It's how I talked to my family. Yeah,
(03:58):
that's how I keep an eye on my mom's uh
confusing internet presence. Yeah, a lot of parents sharing a
lot of fake news about scary things. Yeah, my mom
likes memes. You know, when we were all just sharing
goatsia around ourselves and never thought my parents would but
(04:19):
with something even grosser. My mom started doing this thing
where she'll change your profile picture to a llama and
it's some it's some old person joke that I don't understand,
and she can't explain it to me, like we do
it on Facebook, and I was like, why oh the
boomer of Italian Okay, So our goal is not to
(04:39):
focus on Facebook, but it's founder Mark Zuckerberg, who, as
I stayed at the top, I come to believe is
one of the very worst people alive on this planet.
I agree. Yeah, he usually depicted as like a robot,
like that's the way a lot of descriptions of him
will take. And I think that's unfair. I think it's unfair,
and I think it's calculated. Yeah, and it like allows
him to get away with a ship by being like, no,
(05:00):
I'm just aukward and weird. Yeah. Yeah, I just don't
get your human emotions. No, no, Mark zucker No, no, no, no, no, no,
you get it. You get it. So Mark Elliott Zuckerberg
was born on May fourteenth, nineteen four in White Plains,
New York. For all your astrology heads out there, I
crunched some numbers. He's a Torus son scorpio moon virgo,
(05:21):
ascending him what you will wow telling chart, I think
telling and powerfully erotic chart. Now Mark's father, Edward, is
a dentist. His mother, Karen, was a psychiatrist, but gave
up her career to manage her husband's business and raised
their four children, Mark, Randy, Donna, and Ariel. The business
(05:42):
was run out of their house in Dobbs Ferry, New York.
Elliot Zuckerberg went by painless Doctor Z and his motto
was we cater to cowards. It's a good dentist motto.
Good so far whatever hardcore for me. I don't know
if that would be the cowards. No. I what the
dentist up? My dr My dentists name as a child
(06:03):
was doctor Vagennie Vagennis, the Dennis Vajennie. Oh my god,
vagenis he must have never had a choice of what
he was going to do. Stay tuned next week for
the surely exciting episode on Dr Vagennis the Dentist. Don't
(06:24):
know anything else about him, but I'm sure there's an
hour of content in there. So Mark grew up comfortable,
shall we say not funk the world, rich but very
well off. Edward was a techy guy, and he trained
his son and how to use the basic computer language
on a natari. When Mark was twelve, his dad mentioned
that he wanted a better way for his receptionist to
inform him when a new patient had arrived. Mark used
(06:45):
his code in knowledge to build a program called zucknet. Zucknet. Oh,
I was swallowing water during that. This is where it
started in his view of the world, which is him him. Yeah,
no points for originality on the name. No Zucknet. And
just as a heads up, I had to type Mark
(07:06):
Zuckerberg a lot on this podcast, and I've come up
with a lot of nicknames for him. None of them
are good. May we rank them? Yes, I'm these are
not clever nicknames. I'm just gonna state that off the
bat now. Zucknett has been described as a primitive version
of Ale Well instant messenger. The receptionist was able to
use it to ping ed, and members of the Zuckerberg
family soon took to messaging each other with it too.
(07:27):
Once the young Mark had his family addicted to the program,
he started sucking with him. Here's the New Yorker quote.
One evening, while Donna was working in her room, downstairs.
As screen popped up. The computer contained a deadly virus
and would blow up in thirty seconds. As the machine
counted down, Donna ran up the stairs shouting, Mark, So okay,
(07:48):
right now, we're still in the zone where I'm like
that it could be a fun could be cute, a
cute little product. I mean, not to fast forward, but
it seems like he has never grows up. It does
seem like he never all his cheating on his final
exam via Facebook. Yeah, you can't blame him for this yet,
but given everything else, it's kind of telling because he
(08:08):
can't grow a beard, you know, It's like there's a
lot going on. He definitely never considered that. Actually, he's
even worse at growing a beard than Ted Crews. Yeah,
very smooth face. And that's the shame, because after a
shame like Facebook went through with the election, you would
expect him to drop out of public life for a
while and then come back with a beard and launch
(08:28):
a new product. That's what he wanted to do. But
it can't just like, yeah, I'll go listen to people.
The smooth, droopy face. He didn't have a beard to
wipe his sins away, and he didn't know that the
delicious taste of nacho cheese deritos could have done that
job for him. What a shame, What a heart break.
Now we Mark's brilliance was not all the result of
(08:51):
autodidactic study. When he was eleven, his parents started paying
for a computer tutor to help him develop his skills.
They had computer tutor money in the nineties. Pooter tutor,
good old fashioned pooter tutor. This pooter tutor did describe
Mark as a prodigy. I'm sure he was. One of
(09:11):
Mark's favorite childhood hobbies was to invite his artist friends
over to the house, have them draw things, and then
Mark would code video games based on the drawings. Try hard, friend,
I'm sure those were great parties, everybody drinking way too
much mountain dew. Good times. For years, I only had
a pool to offer for friendship, so I would tell
the cool girls all like, you could come to them
(09:33):
in my pool, and then they would and then they
would leave anywhere else. No, yeah, we should have learned
how to code. Damn. Yeah, then you'd have been breaking
in the friends. That's what it's all about now, being
a precocious rich kid. Mark Zuckerberg's parents shelled out the
big bucks to get him enrolled at Phillips Exeter Academy
(09:54):
for high school. Yeah, okay, yeah, I have a lot
of strong opinions on Exter. Oh I'm decided to hear them.
For some reference, Exeter currently cost its boarding students somewhere
around forty six tho dollars a year, so Mark's parents
spent roughly the annual income of an average American family
on their son's high school education. Everyone who goes to
Exit is a certified chowed. You will not change opinion
(10:17):
that I've encountered so many. Now, Exeter, if you want
to sponsor the show, why would be my We'll take
your cho But that would be very surprising. I mean
they would have to eat Doritos and then they would
be changed forever to become good people. Yeah, it's like
in that like in the nineties commercial you bite it
and then suddenly you're on a skateboard. That's what Exeter needs. Now.
(10:39):
While Mark was an Exeter, he fell in love with fencing.
I did too, right around the same time. So let's
not have any fencing jokes. How I'm out open and
then it closed. I know, I know, you're welcome ready
she was, I watched the joke fire back into her now.
Zucky Boy did well and most of his classes, but
(11:00):
his strength continued to be programming. At Exeter, he built
a program called Synapse, which was essentially a primitive precursor
to Pandora AOL, and Microsoft reportedly offered to buy the
software from him, and he turned them down. When he
went up in college, one of the stories people told
about him is that he was the kid who turned
down a million dollars from and he doesn't care about
the money. It's not about the money. Yeah, the Accidental Billionaires,
(11:24):
the book that was the basis for the Social Network,
makes a huge deal about him turning down the money.
I think it's I think that title says a lot
the accidental. I think it's easier to understand. Like Mark's
dad was rich, a ship, he was paying forty six
dollars a year. First kids college, Mark's never worried about
money a day in his life, So why would give
a big ship about a million dollars? Like, yeah, anything
(11:45):
doesn't mean anything, it's not it's not His mom doesn't
have like diabetes and like can't afford her medication and stuff,
which most kids you get offered a million dollars and
that because you're greedy. It's like, yeah, that'll change my
family's life. Yeah, but this wouldn't make really much of
a dead He'll go to Harvard either way. Fuck it. Yeah,
he's still hate rich people so much. Yeah, realized my
(12:08):
deepest fear is rich people. And I'm coming to terms
with that. Totally reasonable fear. Yeah, way more dangerous my
deepest resentment. It's not resentment because I don't want to
be rich. I wanted myself and my friends not be
scared about our lack of healthcare. Yeah, I want that,
But I don't want Mark Zuckerberg money. I just don't
want anyone else to have Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, I don't
(12:29):
want anyone to have any money. But he's giving his
money away. And also, no, he's not. Several of my
notes dig into the quote unquote charity, not charity work,
A rich person's charity. That's not a real charity. Guys,
he's an accidental billionaire. Come a break. Well, it is
(12:52):
very odd to have someone who is creating the housing
crisis in San Francisco while also using a fake charity
to pretend to help the resolve. I feel like the
CEO of Salesforce is the only rich guy in San
Francisco who's not full of shit about that. And it's like, no,
we've created a problem. We should probably pay taxes to
fix it. But anyway, Salesforce know he's the he's the
(13:22):
only billionaire in San Francisco who came out in favor
of the tax hike. To whatever, you get a point.
I still don't think you should be a billionaire, but
at least you're not on the wrong side of that
issue now. Mark Zuckerberg graduated from high school and was
accepted by Harvard. He joined the Alpha Epsilon Pie fraternity,
which is a Jewish fraternity, and met his now wife,
Priscilla Chan at one of their parties. We started talking
(13:44):
in a line to the bathroom. She later recalled to
the New Yorker quote. He was this nerdy guy who
was just a little bit out there. I remember he
had these beer glasses that said pound include beer dot h.
It's a tag for C plus plus. It's like college humor,
but with a nerdy computer science appeal. I feel so
you could just say unfunnable. He was unfuckable, but it
(14:07):
was clear that he'd be rich. It's like I can
read between these Mark could not because he had those
glasses with ship typed on. Now, Zuck quickly made a
name for himself at Harvard, and that's what he prefers
people to call him suck, is that his preferred him
(14:28):
that name. Harvard frats are not even they're not They're boring.
The excellent billionaires talks a lot about the Harvard frats,
the final clubs and shut. I'm not going to get
into that much because it's just so frustrating to talk about.
The short story is call me back when you're an
M I T. Frat. They program their own lit floors
and sometimes kill themselves during nitrous oxide. Very true, Pretty cool,
(14:52):
Pretty cool. Okay, So he quickly made a name himself
at Harvard. People, of course talked about the fact that
he'd turned down a million dollars. They also talked about
course Match, a program he built during the first week
of his sophomore year. It allowed students picking classes to
see what classes there are other classmates had picked. Now
that sounds innocuous, right, you know, yeah, nothing nothing inherently
(15:15):
bad about that idea, But it's real purpose was to
allow guys to figure out which classes the hot girls
were registered in, so that they could pick the same
class always where I am. Mark Zuckerberg's life does not
pass the Bechtel test. Come chase me, zuck zuck zuck
(15:40):
uh Mark's next groundbreaking achievement was facemash. The Accidental Billionaires
describes it as quote a website where you compared two
pictures of undergraduate girls, voted on which was hotter than
watched as some complex algorithms calculated who were the hottest
chicks on campus. A good good, good once you're in
the school, in the country. Good to know whether you
(16:01):
are hot or if you are. I'm glad you still
get to be, you know, objectified. It's fair Harvard, not
homely Harvard. True. Yeah, there was a day at Northwestern
where they had one of these two or three days
there was one. Yeah, there was briefly one at my
college as well, and it was quickly shut down. But
(16:21):
make no mistake, I tried to figure out what my
ranking was. I don't think I was on the site.
I did look for my side also, and I cried
about that. I was like, I'm not even hot enough
to register on the site. I don't know if my
college had one, but I was not sober enough in
freshman and sophomore. You do you use a computer? Which
(16:43):
makes me Yeah, your life passes the back to too
drunk to be a misogynist. Okay, Now, the pictures on
face mash came from the harp facebooks. Now, the Harvard
facebooks were databases that each residence hall kept on the
(17:04):
students who lived there. Most of these facebooks were private
and only accessible to people in that residence unit. Now,
young Mark Zuckerberg kept a blog, and because of that,
we actually have a rather deep insight into what he
was thinking while he programmed face mash. So I'm going
to read out young zuckety zuck zucka zucka loo zucks.
That was bad. But I'm gonna type Young Mark Zuckerberg's
(17:25):
thank you, Yeah eat one of those shamed to Rito's fantastic.
All right, here's Mark Zuckerberg talking about face mash PM.
I'm a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if
it's not even ten pm and it's a Tuesday night.
What the Kirkland Facebook is open on my computer desktop?
And some of these people have pretty horrendous Facebook picks.
I almost want to put some of these faces next
(17:46):
to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on
which is more attractive. Eleven O nine pm. Yeah, it's on.
I'm not exactly sure how the farm animals are going
to fit into this whole thing. You can't ever really
be sure with farm animals. But I like the idea
of pairing two people together. It gives the whole thing
a very tearing field, since people's rating of the pictures
will be more implicit than say, choosing a number to
(18:07):
represent each person's hotness, like they do on Hot or
Not dot com. The other thing we're going to need
is a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, Harvard doesn't keep a
public centralized Facebook, so I'm gonna have to get all
the images from the individual houses that people are in,
and that means no Freshman pictures. Drat, you can hear
him petting a cat. Yeah, it's also funny because the
(18:29):
way you read that, I think it's probably more attuned
to how he was actually Yeah, as opposed to in
the film where they choose a sort of Rainman type style,
were very gently put the total bullshit. But like the yeah,
(18:51):
the it sounds like he took like a swig of
off brand vodka. I think he was drinking Mr. Boston.
It was some sort of shitty beer it was. It
was like not good beer, but not terrible beer. It
was nicer than Budweiser. No, it was some weird East
Coast thing, but it wasn't y loser. I'm not disagreeing
(19:12):
with you there, And I feel like the only other
way that Andry could end would be like Also, I
came up with this idea called in cells. I also
founded another type of I'm just gonna see the world
with these ideologies crapping up now. I do want to
note that I don't think the no Freshman pictures line
is creepy the way Zuckerberg uses it, because I do
(19:34):
think that he is fundamentally the kind of guy who
would be bugged by building his creepy wank side off
of an incomplete data set. Yeah. I suspect that that's
really what's going on. He's like, I don't have all
the pictures, so we are going to get into how
Mark Zuckerberg got all of the pictures that he used
for his creepy wink side as a hand, he stole them. Wow,
what another theme that first I took him on a sidekick.
(19:56):
But first, Maggie, you're a fan of product Jamie, how
do you feel about services I live to consume. Let's
all first consume a delightful dorrito. Oh my god, that's
so good. And then let's consume these other fine products
and services that have paid us. And we're back. We're back.
(20:22):
We just had a quick little dorito break while we
appreciated all of the many bountiful blessings of capitalism. And
now we're talking about how Mark Zuckerberg got all of
the pictures for his creepy wank site. Now, the very sensible,
super reasonable privacy rules Harvard University had established to protect
the pictures and data of its students were getting in
the way of something Mark Zuckerberg wanted to do. Want
(20:45):
to do this, he was left with only one option,
only one option, break into those residence halls and steal
the data. Now Ben Mezrich, the bad writer of The
Accidental Billionaires, suspects that that's exactly what Mark did. Uh
and typically overwrought, overwritten fashion Mesrich envisions Mark sneaking into
the residence halls like a teenage tony version of Tom
(21:05):
Cruise and Mission Impossible. He admits that this is totally theoretical,
but he imagines a couple fucking in the room while
Marcus stealing the data, like and he's hiding from them
about a dorky eighteen year home. He was writing it
so that the Erin Sorkin movie would be exciting, Like
he was handing off He was literally handing off chapters
(21:26):
to Sorkin as he finished. Sorkin Also, Yeah, I mean, well,
it's like when all these people believe in the inherent
genius and you know, we should praise really really a
wild circle jerk taking place. Fincher, Yeah, and Fincher, And
it's a perfect storm of people who are looking down
on others, people who are self mythologized. Yeah, it's it's
(21:48):
a lot of people who are really good at one
thing and no better than anyone else, but think they're
really good at everything because they're really good at one thing.
It's why engineers make up most terrorists. Wow, yeah, that's true.
Look it up. I do want to say my biggest
takeaway is that Zuckerberg is smart at one thing and
is incredibly stupid at everything else. Like every other person,
(22:11):
every other person, every other person on the planet. But
like your plumber doesn't get on airs about his ability
to fix a smart watch or launch a social network.
He knows. No, I'm fine and everything else. I'm really
good at plumbing. That's great. That's how the world works.
You don't try to run for president. Yeah, I'm good
at this job. I would be terrible at fighting fires.
For some reason. I'm looking at margat Zuckerberg merch right now.
(22:31):
Just get a shirt with them. We'll come up with
a shirt ideator in this podcast. I do have in
the shirt we're coming out with Hendenburg the Oligarchy. He's
going to be one of the guys on the Flaming
Hendenberg hashtag Hendenburg the Oligarchy. Everybody they all died on blimps.
We wouldn't have these problems. So I did not find
(22:54):
The Excellent Billionaires to be an enjoyable read. But I
have to say I think a lot of what Mesrich posits,
including most of this, is quite plausible. I doubt anyone
was sucking the room. But the idea that Mark was
basically breaking into these residents also steal pictures. He got
the pictures somehow. That seems possible. Now, I broke into
a residence hall and still several air conditioners, so not
(23:14):
that hard. You can't just drop that and getting did
you need the air conditioners yourself? Dope to me? I
felt like I needed it. I was really hot. Ironically
broke into a bunch of Boston campuses that weren't mine
my freshman year of high school because I was hired
for the street team of the Social network. So I
(23:35):
snuck onto Harvard Grounds to put up posters to be
like heard of this movie? That is a deep connection.
That is a really deep connection. I still have a
mouse pad. Fantastic you have? You have like merchant you have?
So however he didn't. Mark managed to steal all the
(23:56):
pictures he needed to build his stupid hotter not clone.
Here's what he wrote on his blog before taking it live. Perhaps, however,
it will squelch it for legal reasons without realizing its
value as a venture that could possibly be expanded to
other schools, maybe even once with good looking people. But
one thing is certain, and it's that I'm a jerk
for making this site. Oh well, someone had to do
it eventually. Were we letting for our looks? Know? Will
(24:18):
we be judged on them. Yes, fucker wow. During this
he realizes that he is not a catch. I will say,
in fairness, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg ever had illusions
about that. Feel like you had to write it down
at anything. I really got to become a billionaire. Zuckerberg
(24:47):
launched the program and gave the u r L to
a handful of friends and some kids he wanted to impress.
According to Mezrich, facemash went viral without zuck really intending
for that to happen. In the first two hours, the
site logged two votes. Now that was only by like
four hundred some odd students, so everyone on Harvard sounds
kind of gross. In fairness, Mark shut it down as
(25:10):
soon as he realized it had gotten way, way more
popular than he had intended, but the damage was done.
He was holding in front of Harvard's deans to explain himself.
He admitted he'd done a bad thing, but argued that
he had also helped expose security flaws in Harvard systems,
and he offered to help fix those flaws. That's that's
the rock star moment in the film. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And that that that's how Mesrich presents it. He also
(25:32):
states that marks social awkwardness and his confusion was his
greatest defense, but the Deans had realized he wasn't really
a bad kid. Yeah, I'm gonna read I'm gonna read
a little selection from that He's just awkward. Ye don't
you feel bad for him? Just actually wants to have
sex with Yeah? Actually that's Rashida Jones is the purpose
of her character screenplay is to make sure that we
(25:54):
still like him. I mean, because she just like Rashi
and Jones like after look, said Jesse Eisenberg sympathetically, and
that like don't don't don't like the place every time
I think I actually found a Mark Zuckerberg shirt that
I want. So I'm gonna read the clip from that
Chunk of Accidental Billionaires that describes that, saying, you guys
(26:14):
are just going over because I think it's actually grosser.
The gathered Deans had looked at him and listened to
his stilted affectation, and they had realized that Mark wasn't
really a bad kid. He just didn't think the same
way other kids did. He hadn't realized that girls were
going to get mad because guys were voting on their
appearance hell Market. Eduardo and probably every other college guy
in the world had been ranking female classmates in terms
(26:35):
of hotness since the dawn of structured education. Eduardo was
pretty sure that someday some paleontologist would find a cave
drawing ranking neander tall girls. It was simply human nature. No,
it's not. That's no, it's no, it's not. Treating people
like a rotten tomatoes score is not inherent human nature. Well,
what was the first time you remember being like rated
by someone? In uh, my little fool, Yeah, middle school.
(26:59):
I'm remember there was a large period of my life
where I was not hot and then like when I
became okay looking was when someone stuck a sticker on
my butt. It was a spicy sticker from the Spicy Sandwich?
Is that that was my first like someone finds me
someone had to a chicken sticker on you. But I
(27:22):
remember there was like a hard copy circulating my fourth
grade class and it would change for a three years,
so there was like a racer marks. It is a
real thing that people will always do forever, but empowering
it in any way and easier to do. I don't
know that people who always do it forever. I think
that boys, because I can tell you I did it
as like a teenage boy. And I did it because
I grew up with media that did it too, with
like magazines, like like I didn't just come up with
(27:46):
in my head like oh what if we ranked girls
on a ten point system? Like I saw that and
read that on the Internet and then I did it. Yeah.
Face Mash was something of a disaster on the surface,
but it earned marked the attention of the winkle Boss Twins,
two young rich kids who liked rowing boats and had
come up with a brilliant idea of creating an app
called the Harvard Connection. I think the Winklevoss twins are cute.
(28:08):
They are objectively cute. They're objectively good looking guys. And
I used to try to play a character that was
the third Winkle Vos. He was like their spare tire,
his nameless trip Trip. Yeah it would be trip. It's
chippy had sex with the car. I refused to believe
(28:28):
that both Winklevoss twins have not also had sex with cars.
They haven't a money. They could have bought kit from
night Rider. That's true. The Bitcoin brothers, Yeah, they're hot.
They're hot. They're hot and they roll, no wonder Mark
hated them. Yeah, well they're hot. It's the revenge of
the nerds. Uh, you know story. So they're classic feminist texts. Yeah,
(28:53):
there was another movie I like, There's a teenage Boy,
and then watched as an adult was like, is that
that's rape? Fun film? Now? Um? The idea of the
Harvard Connection, the site the Winkl bosses wanted to make
was basically a site where they wanted a site where
cool guys in college could meet girls without having to
meet them in person. There was something called the fun
(29:15):
Bus that would ferry girls from other colleges to Harvard.
That's what they called it, the fun Bus. But they
thought that was inefficient and wasted time, and they wanted
a faster way to meet people to fuck. And that
was the idea behind the Harvard Connection. The Winkle bosses
couldn't actually cope. They were just rich guys with an
idea for a Fox site. Mark Zuckerberg came into Robert language,
(29:40):
what else do you call it? And I got nothing
wrong with a Fox site if it's another like Tinder.
Tinder was just creative so that everybody could fuck. But
a site just so that rich guys can meet girls
to fuck. That's gross, a site for everyone to fuck whatever.
I got another it's true because it's like it's like
(30:01):
a selected few getting a certain like the specific idea
that like, we're just so busy rowing boats and going
to school, what if we had a Fox site. If
a man can row a boat, he can. I'm not
going to finish that bottle at a Harvard rower once
(30:23):
from the bridge. In my defense, I was drunk at
al Jamie. I uh, you, you can't know how proud
I am knowing that, but it's super proud. So the
(30:44):
Winkle Bosses didn't actually know how to code, which is
where Mark Zuckerber came into the picture. He initially agreed
to help him with the project, and for a while
he emailed back and forth with them, but as time
went on, it slowly became clear that Market no intention
of actually working on their project. He was just stringing
the Winkel Boss twins along while he worked on his
own project, titled the Facebook. Now, the Facebook was minus
a few features the social network we all know and
(31:05):
gradually accept the existence of today. Mark did not started
on his own at the very beginning. The ground floor level.
He worked with a dude named Dwardo. Savern now Saverurren,
was a fellow Harvard student and one of young Zuck's
few good friends at the school. He came from a
rich family and had made like three hundred thousand dollars
the year before with a series of clever investments. Mark
needed Edwardo's cash to get his idea for the Facebook
(31:25):
off the ground. The original agreement was that Edwardo would
be the Facebook's business manager, while Mark would handle the coding.
Edwardo put in the first thousand dollars necessary to get
Facebook off the ground by servers and all that stuff.
With the money taking care of for now, Mark Zuckerberg
was free to build the website of his dreams. While
the Facebook of today looks a lot different from the
focused Harvard Connection website, the Winklebus twins thought Mark was
building for them, the original designed for the Facebook had
(31:48):
an awful lot in common with that idea. Here's how
the accidental billionaires described the initial layout of the site.
There was a picture near the top, whatever picture you
wanted to add, then a list of attributes on the
right side. Here you were in college, your major or
your high school where you came from. Clubs, you're a
member of a favorite quote and then list of friends
people you could add yourself or invite to join a
poke application that allows you to poke other people's profiles.
(32:09):
Were checking them out and in big letters, your sex,
what you were looking for, your relationship status, and what
you were interested in. So while Mark's vision was seemingly
more complete than the Winklevosses idea for Harvard Connection, it
came down to the same basic goal getting people, namely
Mark Zuckerberg quote. The thing that would drive the social
network was the same thing that drove life at college. Sex.
(32:31):
The Actual Billionaires is a fun book. Yeah, so, but
I don't think he's wrong about that. I think he's
I think he's nailing what these kids were going for.
They wanted a fox side kingrats to everyone like like,
I like, I guess like naive is the wrong word,
But I like really didn't think about sex at all
until much later in my life. I was like to
(32:55):
be married in the military. That was chilling. M No,
I don't think that some things I could have done
no one I knew was fucking Yeah yeah me either, really,
I guess, man, man, yeah, It's like it's impossible to
(33:15):
be an eighteen to twenty year on year old mail
and not be thinking about that way too much. Like,
not that are the focus of our media doesn't make
it worse. But you know your hormones as a man,
like that's when things are going fucking wild, so people
be horny. H virginity to a woman. Actually, now that
I congratulation. Yeah, hell yeah. Now. I could go on
(33:37):
for a while about the juvenile nature of Facebook and
his founding. They chose to hire their first wave of
coders based on the results of a drinking contest, but
I feel like they would be counterproductive. You'll get the point.
Mark Zuckerberg was a gross young adult when he first
started his social network. It has gross DNA. But none
of us are at our best when we're college sophomores.
I hope most of you didn't do anything as nasty
as steal thousands of people's data so you could rate
girls based on whether or not they were hotter than
(33:58):
literal cows. But we all do ship that we aren't
proud of at that age. I would not be declaring
Marque bastard purely on the fact that he was a sick,
horny nerd. In college. When I was eighteen, I drank
so much that I vomited on three separate strangers at
the same party, three separate occasions. When I was nineteen,
my friends and I brewed up thirty gallons of trash
cider and got a crowd of strangers so drunk that
one person vomited off the fourth story balcony of the
(34:19):
Dallas Sheraton onto a restaurant full of people. My friends
and I gleeefy heckled the patrons as they ran for cover.
There were umbrellas on the tables, and I remember my
friends shouting, those umbrellas won't save you. So let it
never be said that Behind the Bastards is a show
that judges people just for doing dumpshit when they were young.
(34:39):
I was a shitty young person too. Okay, test your boundaries.
It's fine. If Mark Zuckerberg had changed as a human
being after this, I would not be judging him based
on the fact that he wanted to make a Fox
site when he was nineteen. That's really what is so
disappointing is that like it comes from such a normal place,
Like it's pretty normal. It's pretty like mond ain't. It's
(35:00):
a pretty commonplace given the context of the time it's in,
Like none of this was like shockingly misogynist kind of
like we're not woke culture. It's not worse. He's not
like they were, Like they're definitely kids in fucking Harvard
and stuff. Who were you know, date raping people. Mark
Zuckerberg wasn't doing that. I've never heard any accusations of
anything like that. Like he was just a normal background
(35:23):
noise level misogynist for the time, horny hacker. So let's
get onto why he's really a bastard. I'm going to
brush over most of the founding of Facebook and the
sundry drunken parties that the accidental billionaires makes a big
deal about. Are hotter, super hot abs like a goddamn
cheese grater, both of them. Yeah, the short part of
(35:45):
it is market Edwardo met a guy named Sean Parker,
the Napster founder. Don't really no kind of looks like
at that point right in the movie, Yeah, you know,
he's a good man to have play Sean Parker. They
kind of he did great moment. What's that famous horrible
line that he says, like about a million dollars. What
(36:06):
about a million? You know what's better than a million dollars?
A billion? And then he like fade out. Yeah, he
just disappear. Now. At that point, Sean Parker did not
have much money, but he was an experienced tech entrepreneur
and had solid connections in the industry. It seems like
he kind of helped convince Mark to move out to
California with a couple other Harvard students to work on
(36:26):
the Facebook during the summer. Over this time, it had
spread from Harvard's campus to colleges across the nation. Mark
and his first employees wind up letting Shawan Parker crash
on their couch. The Facebook continued to grow, and Mark
made the decision to drop out of school and stay
in California, a choice I endorse for of Harvard students.
The Facebook up securing a bunch of VC money. Yeah,
get out, get out of that school. Same with Stanford,
(36:48):
go to New York. I guess I don't I don't care.
The Facebook wind up securing a bunch of VC money
from Peter Teal under the requirement that it dropped the
V and just go by Facebook because he was apparently
Sean Parker suggestion, and damned if it wasn't a good one.
No one said he was bad at branding, bad at
having weddings because he had a thirty million dollar wedding
that destroyed a forest. But yeah he had. He had
a Lord of the Rings themed wedding and he didn't
(37:09):
get permits and had to pay ten million dollars in fines.
He like us bulldozers in places that you're not supposed
to be nerd culture is, Yeah, you want to do
your fucking Lord of the Rings winding up to destroy
a forest for it? How you're someone to see? He
was point, Yeah, well he wanted to be sorrow he
saw he saw that as a Yeah, I didn't really
(37:33):
get the message trying to a whole bunch of little sorrows.
Fucking did Gero Tolkien would have been pisted him for
having a bulldozer. Not a big fan of industrial construction equipment.
You read the guy much um. Also an anarchist, but
kind of a weird anarchist. But yeah, self declared, Yeah, yeah,
he was a weird type of anarchists. A lot of
(37:55):
stuff about the Catholic Church or whatever anywhere. Yeah, showed anarchy. No,
I mean he was like, he is a good quote,
which was like, I don't think people should be in
charge of other people less than one in a million
is capable of doing the job, which is I agree.
I think I really agree with that. He lived through
World War One. You don't want a fan of hierarchy. Now. Well,
(38:18):
Mark and the Facebook's first few employees were living in
Palo Alto if they were being bankrolled by Eduardo Saverin.
He had put roughly twenty tho dollars into the company
to get it off the ground. He was also working
well in New York, trying to sell to advertisers and stuff,
putting in his time and also the only person putting
money on the line. So he's really believed in this project,
really being a good friend, but his relationship with Mark
(38:38):
got rocky. The accidental billionaires and the social network make
it look like Sean Parker got his hooks into Mark
and he and Zuckerberg started taking meetings with investors, bad
friend influence, duck innocent, Yeah exactly. They were meeting without
Eduardo's knowledge, and Eduardo reacted by cutting off Facebook's assets
to his money because he thought he was getting edged
out of the company, which is exactly what was happening. Um,
(38:59):
but diabolical teen pretty gross. Now, that's what prompted them
to make a deal with Peter Teel. Since Eduardo was
contracted to own Facebook, they couldn't cut him out entirely.
But it seems like their lawyers engaged in some complicated
legal factory. We will be talking about that legal fury
and the other people that Mark Zuckerberg sucked over who
are not mentioned in the social network because he stole
(39:20):
from somebody else too. But first, you know what doesn't
steal from anyone The wonderful advertisers who supported our program
and or show with their products indoor services, and we're
also supported. Maggie, you beat me to that delightful, satisfying crunch.
How's those blazes doing? Man? I am a convert? Does it?
Does it up a cold winter day? I like it?
(39:44):
It's like a heater for your insides. That's a free one.
Torito's people don't use that products and we're back. That's
that's ea. Actually what I always say after a solid
product and or service. Now, uh, we were talking about
(40:06):
what Mark Zuckerberg did to EDWARDO. Saverin the good friend
who invested twenty dollars in his buddy's idea and also
worked full time pretty much to try to make it
a reality, which is great friending. You'd think that would
build up some loyalty at Wardo sounds like a really
good friend. Wardo sounds like a real one. Yeah, let's
talk about how he got over. He's not in the movie, right, Yeah,
(40:26):
he's the guy who does not come across this edution
the story. I don't know anything about him. Maybe he
kills chickens or something, but maybe chickens need to be killing.
He got in on bitcoin too. I think he's rich anyway,
it doesn't matter now. Mark pretended to make nice with Eduardo,
and so Edwardo signed a contract that made it look
(40:46):
like he was getting actually thirty four percent of the company.
But this was just a bunch of complicated legal bullshit
um and the company was allowed, based on the sort
of terms of the contract, to actually dilute Edwardo shares
to weigh less than more ten percent. Savern maintains he
was cheated out of his fair steake of the company
when Mark and Sean Parker edged Severn out. They also
(41:07):
cut his name out of Facebook lore It's not all
that different from the stuff you'll hear about in Stalinist Russian.
He was basically deleted from the company history. Now. When
the social network came out, Zuckerberg attacked it for being inaccurate.
But in the years since, the emails he sent to
his lawyer around this time have come out. At one
point he asked, quote, is there any way to do
this without making it painfully apparent that he's being deluded
to ten percent talking about Eduardo, to which his lawyer responded,
(41:30):
the broad categories of legal risk are a fiduciary duty
as Eduardo was the only shareholder being deluded by the grants. Again,
as Eduardo is the only shareholder being deluded by the
grants issuances, there is a substantial risk that he may
claim the issuances, especially the ones to Dustin and Mark
but also to Sean, are a brist of fiduciary duty
later on, if not now. According to Business Insider, this
is exactly what happened. Quote Savern eventually sued Facebook over
(41:53):
breach of fiduciary duty. Facebook and Savern settled, and he
walked away with four five percent of the company. That
Steak is now worth close to five billion. So again
he's doing all right. You don't gotta feel that sorry
for Red Wirdo, but what Mark does is slimy here
now Well, the exact terms of the settlement are unclear.
Facebook was also forced to reinstate Severeian's name in the
company history. Mark also eventually settled with the Winkle bosses
and their partner in the Harvard connection, a guy named Nearindra.
(42:16):
They reportedly got sixty five million. Well, Facebook's legal team
we're working on that case. They searched Mark's computer and
came across the I M s he sent at the time.
These I M s paint a very fun and very
ugly picture of the man previously described as just robotic.
Wait do we know what his green name was? I
don't think in the type Oh maybe he got all right?
(42:39):
So made just to Ben's up. Here is one exerpt
from a conversation between Mark and a friend talking about
his real plans to work on the Winklevosses social network.
This is when he was still telling the Winklevosses he
was working on it. Friend, So have you decided what
you're going to do about the websites suck? Yeah? I'm
going to fuck them, probably in the year but he
then he then corrects, probably in the year two. Ear
(43:02):
ear yeah, yeah, the ear fuck you freaking yeah. I
can see why they won that suit or settle. Yeah.
Information that's turned up in the years since has also
shown that Eduardo's Savareen was not the only friend who
invested in Mark's website and got sucked over. Paul Sieglia
(43:23):
seems to have invested two thousand dollars into Facebook in
exchange for some steak in the finished project. Now, at
some point, Mark Zuckerberg clearly realized that his baby was
going to be valuable. He started lying to Sieglia claiming
that the project was basically dead in the water, so
that he could pay the friend back his two thousand
dollars and cut out his interest in the business. Here's
one email he sent to Sieglia in two thousand four,
while he was in California working to make Facebook. Paul,
(43:48):
I'm guessing that you don't want to talk to me,
but I wanted to say happy birthday and that I
hope to resolve our differences. I see that what I
did was wrong, and I'm really sorry that I behaved
as I did. Please give me your address and I
will mail you back the two thousand dollars for your
trouble more if it were a pair of business relationship.
Another summer is here and I still don't have any
time to build our site. I understand that I promised
I would, but other things have come up and I'm
(44:08):
out in California working during break. I just don't want
the obligation of having to answer you for not following through,
and I won't be able to the first half of
that email sounds like what my cousin texts everyone every
time he gets out of jail. I don't think I
can repair these relationships regretting my mistakes. Yeah, one month later,
Hi again, regretting same mistakes. Cycles are a bit in
(44:34):
some fairness. I never got over the mistakes that I
made at nineteen, because, like six months ago, I was
drunk in Santa Monica and I started stealing light bulbs
from the outside of bars and throwing them at my
friend's feet. Yourself away. I haven't grown up either, but
I don't have billions of lives in the balance either.
I am purchasing the Zuckerberg shut and just why don't
(44:56):
you read the front of that Zuckerberg shirt. Good Zuckerberg shirt.
It's a picture of Zucky programming as a Harvard student.
He's got a water bottle of wine glass and a
red bull and the quote below reads quote you can
be unethical and still be illegal. That's the way I
live my life. Ha ha ha oh beautiful. It gets uglier.
(45:22):
See the problem with being a tech obsessed young person
who focks over countless people to start your business is
that a lot of the conversations that prove you to
be a gross weirdo are going to come out. Here's
one Mark had with a friend after he launched Facebook
in his dorm room and eight percent of his classmates
were using the service. Zuck. Yeah, So if you ever
need any info about anyone at Harvard, just ask I
have over four thousand emails, pictures, addresses, sns, redacted friend's name.
(45:45):
What how did you manage that one? Zuck? People just
submitted it. I don't know why they quotation Marks trust
me ha ha dumb Fox? That really they Yeah. There's
a scene in the Social network where is Zuckerberg meets
um two fans and they make like idiots of themselves.
(46:09):
They like fall over each other and the point of
that scene is, aren't the people who look up to
you stupid and dumb? And that's what I think. Fincher
is very effective at communicating with his films and uh
still lionizing the main character as like, yeah, his customers
are idiots, and let's make fun of them. Yeah, they're
(46:30):
farm animals. They are the farm animals, say they do
the same thing advice, which bother anyway, as I have
very strong opinions about advice. It made me mad. It
made me mad, but I thought it did a good
job of talking about how excribble of a human he is.
Why would anyone make Dick Cheney look remotely cool right now?
I don't know. Maybe it's because I've been there and
(46:51):
I've seen the consequences of it. I didn't think he
looked cool, but I thought everyday consumer he could seem cool.
That's the that's the fun. You know a lot about
chain whereas yeah, you know that that's a good worry
to have. It's like, um, I was reading an interview
with the guy who created The Punisher talking about like
who was being told that, like police officers are putting
(47:11):
it on his car and he's furious He's like, no,
he's not a pro cop character. He's making the point
that our justice system is so fun that a lunatic
with a gun is murdering strangers at the street. That's
not good, right, Yeah, that's how we are doing cops. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Like very frustrating. Um the shirts on the way fantastic.
(47:34):
Facebook received it's one millionth registered user on December four.
It spread to high school students in September of two
thousand five, and introduced the ability to tag people. In
December of two thousand five and September two six, the
service was finally open to everyone anywhere in the world.
The stage was finally set for Facebook's blisteringly rapid growth
to the world single most dominant media organization. During this time,
(47:56):
Marcus Soukerberg grew wealthier and ever more influential, but he
didn't grow out of being a tremendous douche back. In fact,
as we'll cover in part two, the wild succiss of
Facebook turn mark from a kind of sliming nerd bro
it is something much much darker. Jamie Loftus, Oh well,
you can find me online wearing my new Zuck shirt. Uh,
(48:18):
Jamie loftus help and on Instagram at Jamie cry Superstar
and they call it, they call it the ground. I'm sorry,
Famous zuck Entity, if you want to support me, and
I'm going to be posting a picture of my ironic
Mark Zuckerberg T shirt on Mark Zuckerberg's platform any day now.
I'm really like, I'm really telling him. I'm really excited
(48:41):
he'll get the message. I think this time he'll show
him from inside his diamond bathtub filled with Christal Coward
Maggie May Fish Pubs plug. Yes, you can find me
on Twitter at that name Maze with an E because
of my dead great grandmother. Yeah. Yeah, you can find
(49:05):
me on YouTube at that same name. And yeah, I
have a podcast about friendship which you can find on
my Twitter fantastic. I'm Robert Evans. You can find me
on Twitter at I right, Okay. I have a book
called A Brief History of Ice where I injured my
friends with dangerous ancient drugs. Oh that's not your review
of the movie. No, I am kind of frustrated that
(49:26):
I'm stealing my name, which no one had ever used
outside of my book. It's a really unique title. It's
a Doggie dog world Now. You can find this podcast
online at behind the Bastards dot com, where all these sources,
many many sources for this podcast will be available. You
can find us on Instagram, the Graham and Twitter at
at Bastards pod. And you can buy a T shirt
(49:47):
from t Public. You get hoodies, you can get drinks,
you can get stickers, you can get a lotty twenty
millimeter canon branded with Behind the Bastard's content. If you
need to knock out moderately armored h yeah I do.
Who doesn't. We all need to shoot through police bearcats
every now and then, and and the te Public Lotti
(50:09):
twenty millimeter anti tank gun can help you do that.
So Public, great site. Let's go shopping and come back
for part two. Mark Zuckerberg The worst man in the Century.
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
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