I don’t get it. I just don’t get Mark Zuckerberg.
He now stands accused of facilitating Russian operatives with flooding Facebook with tons of fake advertisements during Election Cycle 2016.
Trump came up with the term, ‘Fake News’. But at least these two outlets, Facebook and Yahoo News, converted it into an art form.
Throughout 2016 and before, FB was full of links and shared-many-times-over links that said crazy, dubious-sounding stories, Hillary giving birth to a black child, for one.
The titles often gave them away as fabricated. But they kept coming. Myself, I used to wonder, not so much about the source, as to who was ever reading them.
There are many varied and opinionated analysis on why Hillary lost the last U.S. election.
On election Tuesday last November, even as of 5.30pm, the NYT was reporting a 90% chance for a Hillary win. This is a fact. This was the last thing I checked before l hurriedly left work that day.
Whether one agreed with her policy stances or not, a pity, we won’t be seeing the likes of her, running for the nation’s highest office for a very long time. We can be certain of this. That rare combination of drive and intellect is hard to come by.
But there is such an unwittingly prudent phenomenon in American politics called the ‘Pendulum Swing’. This is largely a good thing.
If it keeps swinging just one way, it’ll eventually break the fulcrum it’s on.
Cases in point:
Long ago, we switched from the creator of ‘The Great Society’,
to a Commander-In-Chief who had a ‘Secret Plan To End The Vietnam War’.
To, by extension, someone who declared ‘Our Long National Nightmare to be Over’.
From there to someone who promised us to ‘Never Tell A Lie’.
Then we marched to the Gipper’s drumbeat towards ‘A Shining City On A Hill’.
And then we listened to the ‘Read My Lips, No New Taxes’ upper crust Yalie.
Then along came the ‘Man From Hope’ who raised our hopes as a breath of fresh air.
And moved on to the ‘Uniter’ that everyone supposedly wanted to have a Texas beer and BBQ with.
Then, of course, came the history changer, ‘The Change We Had Been Waiting For’. Yes, We Can. And we did.
to now to this, to the one who wants to ‘Make America Great’ again.
Again? I thought it was the greatest. But never mind.
With each adjustment came a party switch. (Except the one time when we went from ‘Morning In America’ to ‘The Thousand Points Of Light’.)
So, that Hillary lost, does not have to remain a mystery.
And alas, she didn’t have a catchy slogan for a country that gets fueled on slogans.
Back to MZ.
What a lousy excuse.
What FB committed is indefensible.
Recently I saw that MZ asked for forgiveness. As well, he should. Fittingly, it was on Yom Kippur. The Jewish Day Of Atonement.
Wonder how many have seen the movie ‘Social Network’? If you haven’t, I recommend it. I’ll give it 4+ stars.
Granted, movies are dramatized. That’s what movies do. Exaggerate. But there is a whole of fact in there.
Mark Zuckerberg is a case study for severe contradictions. Ying and Yang. Hot and Bland.
On the one, he seems unassuming, wearing baggy sweatpants, and hoodies, and T’s and flip-flops around the most elite academic spot on earth, and among its preppiest.
On the other, he willfully cheats the three people (four, if you count Divya Narendra) who helped him get to where he is.
-Three of them, the Winklevoss brothers and Divya, from whom he stole the idea of creating a social connection space on the internet.
-Then his right-hand sidekick, Eduardo Saverin, who was the marketing genius behind all of it, and whose ultra-rich Argentinian father bankrolled the whole venture, while Mark was sitting in a windowless dorm room, coding and coding.
All four had their days in court and won their Dollar battles.
Plus, Eduardo won the right to forever be billed as the cofounder of FB along with Mark Zuckerberg. But he had to go to court to get it.
On the one, he donated $100 million to the Newark, NJ school system, (which by the way, completely have gone unaccounted for. That’s another story).
On the other, he ran pages and pages of fake ads on FB for a solid year. This from a guy who champions human rights, women’s rights, and pets’ rights.
Saying he didn’t know the Russians were behind it. didn’t know? Sounds a lot like ‘the cat ate my homework’.
On the one, he seems to be in a committed marriage to Priscilla.
On the other, he completely calloulsy stood up his girlfriend, this, at least by the film version.
On the one, he has given away his daughters’ inheritances.
On the other, it comes with some sort of a string attached.
Just to be fair, Yahoo’s Marisa Mayer was equally complicit in these dubious postings, all listed sources with names that made them sound legit: International Time, Business Insider, The independent, to name just three.
But they were as fake as the Cool-Aid drinking beverage. Cool-Aid is the nastiest food in America. Don’t drink it.
Among the mostly ‘non-existent’ media coverage was the following in the Globe the other day.
‘Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized this week for using storm-damaged and flooded Puerto Rico as a background while he showed off “Facebook Spaces,” the company’s new virtual reality project.’
Oh, brother.
What with the two menacing Harveys, (the monsoon and the man), Joseph and Maria before that, and California ‘not’ Dreamin’ (I’m in disbelief watching what’s going on there), I guess the media have bigger fish to fry. Russia has moved to the back burner while King Mackerel is frying on the front.
Thus, So far, Mark is getting away with it all by a winning smile, and charm talk, like the one he gave at Harvard Commencement this year, but followed it up with a hearty laugh all the way to J.P. Morgan Chase.
mercy's musings 