My Facebook generation – The Movie Filter

Anyone who works in an intergenerational office knows people in their 20s view money, power, work and time in terms largely unique compared to those in their 40s, 50s and beyond. So what happens to our culture when Millennials become millionaires? What happens when a 26-year-old who can afford half of Hollywood Hills chooses to sleep on a mattress on the floor of a two-bedroom apartment?

Based in part on Ben Mezrich’s dubious 2009 “tell-all” The Accidental Billionaires, David Fincher’s new film The Social Network is more than a movie. It’s part of the larger social experiment that is Facebook, one that exposes increasingly glaring generational issues and could affect our culture and economy for decades.

Mark Zuckerberg is not just a geeky Harvard dropout in the Bill Gates mold who developed a website that hit big. He’s the youngest billionaire on the planet. His company, Facebook, is barely six years old. So who is this kid? What will he do with his fortune? Is he Jimmy Gatz or Jay Gatsby or neither?

One thing is certain: his personality and his creation are often largely misunderstood.

According to 60 Minutes, Zuckerberg sits at a desk in the middle of Facebook’s open floor plan office in Palo Alto just like every other employee. Buyouts will never work on him because he is a poster boy for his millennial generation. That’s what the boomers at Google and Yahoo! never understood in their attempts to swallow Facebook. Instead it was Microsoft, founded by Gates, that had the best idea for reaching him: a partnership.

In 2007, Microsoft purchased 1.6% of Facebook, a small stake, but a toehold that gives Gates a first-look option to buy the whole cow should Zuckerberg choose to cash in. “There’s a lot more we’re going to be doing together,” a Microsoft executive told Internet News at the time.

Zuckerberg’s deal with Gates mirrored the attributes of Facebook itself. The social networking site simultaneously feeds our needs for both supreme independence and the warmth of connectivity. More friends equals more attention, and therefore, a greater sense of security and self-worth. That this digital community comes with a slight voyeuristic buzz and few strings attached is merely a bonus for our time-cherishing, multi-tasking masses. Privacy, however, is obsolete. No matter. Growing up, Millenials had none.

The majority of Millennials had “helicopter parents” who hovered over every detail and decision of their youth. Like a crutch, Facebook provides users with a similar feeling of familial support and encouragement through a near-constant stream of feedback from “friends” who drop in to say hello, or leave comments and wall posts on everything from photos and status updates to confessional blog entries.

How’s my new hair? How’s my choice of food or clothing or vacation spot? How am I doing? Facebook users want to know.

It’s a brave new world where it’s not who you are, or even who you know, anymore. It’s who knows you, and what they have to say.

The Social Network opens nationwide Oct. 1.

Read The Movie Filter each Wednesday in 225Select or here.