The Social Network is a dark film that makes me think twice when I log on to my Facebook account. In the opening scene, the somber lighting and edgy music tell us that something is wrong. Director David Fincher is not crusading for intellectual property rights, or even documenting internet evolution. He and Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter, seem intent on ambushing viewers with the great ironies of our information age. For Sorkin and Fincher, social networks are just as much forces for alienation as they are for collaboration. Real-life friends are dispensable. Profits rule. In the final scene, Mark Zuckerberg’s character pathetically refreshes his Facebook page over and over, in the hopes that an old girlfriend (whom he publicly berated in a drunken blog post) will accept his friend request. Based on her icy attitude in their last encounter, we presume that she will click the “ignore” button. In the end, the gazillionaire creator of Facebook, a site which supposedly puts people together, is alone.
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