The Social Network and Žižek

“I don’t want to use facebook anymore”, was my first thought after I watched the movie the Social Network.

Before I watched that movie I thought it is a story about how a smart young man fulfills his dreams. Even when all of his friends was turning back on him because of the money and fame, he will never stop chasing his dreams. But I soon realize I was completely wrong.

The way Mark Zerckberg treated his friends in the film made me felt that he don’t deserve to be the youngest billionaire in the world. He kept claiming that he invented the Facebook like that’ the only thing matters in the world. That’s right, he is a genius, he invented the Facebook but that doesn’t give him the right to treat his friends like that.

These days I was reread Žižek; and I thought that in that film, the reason Mark valued the Facebook so much could applied what Žižek mentioned as the desires for the ”use value” and the “exchange value”. Mark keeps claiming to everyone that he invented the Facebook. It seems that he desires what the website could bring to him: girlfriends, fame, and wealth. However, in my opinion, things like fame and money can only be considered as the “use value” of the website, they are forms of expression of the “exchange value”. For Mark, what he really wanted was a confirmation of the others' attitude toward him, in other words, he wanted to be cared about by other people. In the beginning he thought he could get that by joining the final clubs, or by becoming famous, but he failed. It is only in the very end of the film where he finally realized what he wanted, so he sent out an Facebook invitation to his ex-girlfriend . May be this time he will finally realize what is the most valuable thing for him.

After all it is a great movie. I really love it.