Mark Zuckerberg is not socially awkward

The term socially awkward is thrown around a lot these days, notably to describe Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. This is likely a direct result of the Social Network, and Eisenberg’s performance as the ‘socially awkward’ gajillionaire.

Aaron Sorkin’s Mark Zuckerberg is not socially awkward. Mark Zuckerberg walks into meetings with high powered executives and tells them to blow him. And there are at least five cases in which they did. He luxuriated through the court cases against him like Fred Astaire’s more chilled out uncle, Max-chiller Astaire. When asked whether he believed a court case deserved his full attention,  he answered:

            “I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try - but there's no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.”

Zuckerberg proceeded to dead-lift his ninety-kilogram balls and drop them on the table, both destroying the table and creating a shockwave that left millions in the surrounding area dead.  Zuckerberg then produces a bottle of liquefied ketamine, which he pours into his left eyeball (he needs the right to drive). He turns to the lawyer and asks; “Did I adequately answer your condescending question?”

That is not the behaviour of a socially awkward individual. The individual above, who in the film does actually say those words and may or may not (pending on closer examination of stills) have ninety kilogram testicles. The Social Network’s Zuckerberg is a public-toilet banging gunslinger.

The Facebook movie is probably not the only reason people have been using the term socially awkward so much recently, is on account of the fact that the word ‘awkward’ is one of the most overused in the English language. Not everything is awkward, let me tell you what awkward is.

Awkward is when you walk into a lift and realize as the door closes that you went to school with the girl in front of you, and you don’t remember her name, and the guy on your right is a friend from uni who always insists on talking for at least twenty minutes even though he has no conversational skills whatsoever, forcing you to ask questions like you’re mike munroe except instead of getting paid millions you get to hear about hiking in queensland or northern territory or wherever it is he goes hiking, who even cares? Not me. Fuck that guy and fuck hiking. What’s the point in hiking? You go in a circle. If you’re going to walk somewhere you may as well be doing it for a reason, like to the local shopping centre or home after another fruitless night trying to meet women in parking lots. 

But I digress, so you’re in a lift, and in front of you is that girl from school and the socially maladroit hiker, and you have to get out of the lift two floors before they do, they haven’t noticed you, but you have to push past them to get out of the lift and they’ll surely want to talk.

And then you turn to your right and see your only son making out with a dude, and you want to be OK with it but you wanted grand kids and it would have been nice if he had spoken to you about it first. Anyway the lift hits your floor, and in walks your wife, except she has taken off her fat-woman costume and it turns out she is Martin Lawrence, as is your son. You stay in the lift with everyone. Suddenly the buildings electricity fails, and you’re all stuck in the small cube for at least three hours. Also, somebody said something racist and someone else made a holocaust joke and another person is smoking in the elevator.

That’s awkward.