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Comment by michael_nielsen | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg is flat-out wrong in his assertion that Hollywood doesn't understand people building something just because they like building things. I'm quite sure he's right when it comes to some people in Hollywood, possibly even many of the most powerful people. But I'll bet that what gets a great writer like Aaron Sorkin up in the morning is the same kind of creative impulse that drives hackers. Sorkin is a hacker - just in a different medium.

None of which is to say that Sorkin's portrayal of Zuckerberg is at all accurate. In the West Wing, Sorkin once wrote: "You think I think that an artist's job is to speak the truth [but] an artist's job... is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention." I think he's quite right, but it's a heck of a philosophy if you're making a movie about someone still living.

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"Creative" people don't all have one type of motivation. I think people in the entertainment business don't usually have quite the same motivations that hackers do. When people in the entertainment business make things, even when they have the purest motives, they do it to affect an audience. Whereas hackers often build things mainly for themselves, just to see if they'll work.

Movies are messages. Hacks are not, necessarily. I think what Mark meant is that people in Hollywood would find it hard to imagine someone building something like Facebook just to see if it would work, rather than to have some effect on its audience, especially considering that one of Facebook's most distinctive features, at least now, is the enormous number of users it has.

There's one wrinkle I see here, speaking as an Aaron Sorkin fanboy.

There's a lot Sorkin does that just shouldn't work. His dialogue is extremely lengthy and, in the case of The West Wing and Sports Night, he completely threw out the idea of using internal (team) conflict to drive the narrative, choosing unity instead. His President of the United States was extraordinarily idealistic and principled, even under fire.

This is a long way of saying I think Sorkin does it this way to amuse himself. He creates things he, himself, would like. He certainly feels an obligation to his audience, as the parent comment mentioned, but overall he writes the characters and dialogue in a way that gives him pleasure.

edit: Even going so far as to inject the idea of taking pleasure from writing things well into his scribe characters: Danny and Casey in Sports Night, Toby, Sam, President Bartlet and Will on the West Wing.

I'm also a Sorkin / WW fanboy and would add:

1) The movie isn't for y'all (i.e. SV programmers) - it's for everyone else. How Raiders of the Lost Ark is Spielberg's action-adventure archeology, The Social Network is a Sorkin-banter exercise.

2) Sorkin enjoys writing for intellectual ideology, which is very difficult to position in any form of entertainment. In a way, he's forced to choose personas capable of centering his complex dialog, be it the President of the United States or a 20-something self-made billionaire.

Could the argument be made that Sorkin's style filled a void in the marketplace that was network TV drama in the case of West Wing?

Long, tight, terse dialogue is what the audience interacted with most immediately with West Wing. Sorkin can write, so he does. I would say audiences who appreciated good writing and a different conflict arc to drive the narrative had few other alternatives for that time slot.

I wouldn't chalk all of The West Wing's success with an unusual recipe up to Sorkin. Martin Sheen, IMHO, does an amazing job in his role, which (also IMHO) is pivotal to the recipe, and I can't imagine any other actor pulling it off so well.

But by the nature of a social networking site "seeing if it works" means "seeing if it affects in audience in a way to get them to join".

I'm sure Mark wasn't interested in seeing if he could build the technical aspects of the site. Besides issues of scale and some of the newer programmatic layers, none of it seems like rocket science from the perspective of a developer.

Unlike a hacking project to see if you can make free long distance calls... I think that Facebook is a lot more like the movie than what Woz used to do.

In my experience as a game developer at least, the best entertainers absolutely would play around with ideas and work on projects for their own gratification.

And on the other hand, Facebook succeeding or not is by definition it having an effect on its audience - if people like it enough to keep using it, it'll work. So if anything it's probably more like making a movie than a technical hack.

I think you're drawing a distinction in motivations (audience/no audience) that doesn't really fit. If we're talking about the best of both industries, I think they both work on each type of project.

"Movies are messages. Hacks are not."

Maybe art films are messages, but most Hollywood films are all just following the same masturbatory formula to sell tickets by telling people what they want to hear. The goal is to glorify the complacency of the average American by selling them on the idea that they can get different results by doing the same thing. That's why just about every Hollywood film starts with the main character waking up one day and discovering that he's different than everyone else, and he has some sort of special destiny. No hard work required, you just have to recognize that one big opportunity that only comes once in a lifetime and take it, or whatever other bullshit.

If anything hackers should learn from Hollywood and use the same toolkit to market their startups. Apple does it extremely well, but rarely do I see startups doing a good job at it.

I think it's difficult to separate "see if it would work" from having "some effect on its audience" for something so completely focused on its audience. This isn't a hard disk driver, it's software built around the notion of real people interacting with each other.

I also think in the context of starting a company around it, the motivation is absolutely to have an effect on your audience. After all, your moto is "make something people want" not simply "make something that works."

The few writers in Hollywood that I know will write 50 stories for every one that gets made into a movie/short/etc. Many stories are written down just as experiments or to get an idea out of the system... very similar to how I work as a code hacker.

There are, of course, uncreative money-grubbing people in Hollywood... just like in the tech world.

Both you and Mark need to get off your high horses. You don't build Facebook for yourself, you build it for an audience. Otherwise, it's not Facebook.

Likewise, most people who love making movies do it because they love making it. A lot of those movies never get audiences. Just like a lot of software projects never see the light of day. But some do.

These sorts of careless generalizations are just that, careless, and generalizations. They don't help much, except to spark arguments and debate. I think Mark should have stopped at, "They got X wrong", instead of presuming to know what "Hollywood" does or does not understand.

I feel like Zuckerberg is understandably defensive about the way he was portrayed in the movie. It would freak anyone out to see their character faults displayed and magnified and exploited to drive much of the dramatic content in a full length feature film. The Newark donation, the response in the interviews, it all comes off as defensive to me.

Zuckerberg is a lot of great things but in my opinion he's not entirely aware of how his actions are perceived by others. By that I mean he doesn't seem honest. He says he came out to Stanford in the summer "just to hang out." Why can't he say, "I wanted to build facebook and they have great programmers out here. The weather also kicks ass."? It's hard to believe him sometimes.

But I'll bet that what gets a great writer like Aaron Sorkin up in the morning is the same kind of creative impulse that drives hackers.

Maybe. But maybe writers don't see technical people (like hackers) as creative people. They wouldn't be the only ones. Or maybe they do understand that impulse, but underestimate their audience and assume the audience isn't going to understand the creative impulse.

> Zuckerberg is flat-out wrong in his assertion that Hollywood doesn't understand people building something just because they like building things.

He's not insulting the creative drive of moviemakers, he's lamenting the fact that they choose not to (or cannot) make this drive understandable to the laymen in the context of IT.

(P.S. I love your book! But your justification for CP maps is misleading!)

It's not about making the drive understandable. Everyone understands it in a general sense. Every 'lay' person I've ever met has some hobby they 'geek out' over, as its own reward.

For movies, it's a matter of making the story entertaining for the larger swath of people who (by definition) don't all geek out about the same things.

E.g. I'm a geek. I'm a gamer. I can't even get up the motivation to netflix King of Kong, let alone watch it all the way through. I understand and respect that those guys geek out over Donkey Kong. But that doesn't hold my interest.

Hollywood would have as much luck trying to make people understand the joy of hacking as we hackers have in trying to make people understand privacy and security.

>Everyone understands it in a general sense. Every 'lay' person I've ever met has some hobby they 'geek out' over, as its own reward.

I think you're either wrong here, or are using "geek out" so generally as to make it pretty much meaningless. Playing Halo, drinking fine wines, and whittling figurines are not equivalent to IT creation. Having a passion for those former things does not automatically allow one to appreciate the latter.

Can we stop over-applying the word "hacker" to everything that produces something or other? I know that Graham loves doing that, but it just dilutes the term till it becomes utterly vacuous. Screenwriters are not hackers. There's very, very little commonality.

Well, both create text at some point. I'll give you that.

"I know that Graham loves doing that"

I do?

Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.

Hack is of course applied by practically everyone who uses it to things other than code. The word we're talking about here though is hacker. Which is not just hack with er on the end of it any more than robber is just rob with er on the end of it.

I can see from your other comments today that you might be getting frustrated with this topic and I understand. It's not my intention to draw out some asinine debate over the use of the work hacker and hack.

That said, I can definitely understand why the original poster was assuming you use the word hacker in non-conventional ways. Claiming "one who hacks" is a metaphor for a person who implements innovative and disruptive ideas and then claiming "one who hacks" does not equate to a "hacker" is a bit of a semantic train wreck.

For the record, I've never heard of some one who uses "hacks" in that way to describe anything outside of the traditional "hacker" sense. I personally think it is a clever and interesting way to think of the word, and I also don't understand why anyone would be particular upset about it enough to post a comment.

"claiming "one who hacks" does not equate to a "hacker" is a bit of a semantic train wreck"

No, in standard usage they are not equivalent. "Hack" is used broadly for slightly dubious solutions in programming and other domains, whereas "hacker" is rarely used to refer to anything other than programmers.

From catb:

"The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term ‘hacker’."

I don't believe that hacking is or should be confined to programming.

I don't believe that hacking is or should be confined to programming.

That's pretty funny insofar as it (the verb) is precisely the point not in dispute. Also, your quote supports what pg said: "hacker" refers to programmers by default, though non-standard usages are possible.

I don't see how this is even an argument. Pick just about any verb; I just thought of "bake". I baked something the other day. Does that make me a baker?

I baked something the other day. Does that make me a baker?

It means that you baked something.

Now, someone might look at it and say "That thing that gruseom baked is really good. Gruseom has the Baker nature." You might then gain respect from other bakes that you made and people consider you a baker.

I wasn't attempting to argue with pg - Do people only reply to him in order to stir things up? (I think, perhaps, that I've seen this pattern.) I was only throwing in what I consider to be a good definition of the scope of hacking from someone who has written a lot about the hacker culture (esr).

Except .. in mainstream media where a hacker is someone who do digital breaking and entering.

I believe that the people doing the "digital breaking and entering" are called "programmers", just as pg claimed.

Allow me to inject some fun:

preps needle with 10cc 'Different Topic Time'

Paul, may I ask you, "what is the time you (personally) most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage?"

It would be cool to know!

YCombinator?

The real reason we started Y Combinator is one probably only a hacker would understand. We did it because it seems such a great hack. There are thousands of smart people who could start companies and don't, and with a relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place, we can spring on the world a stream of new startups that might otherwise not have existed.

http://paulgraham.com/whyyc.html

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715667

any more than robber is just rob with er on the end of it

But one steals by threatening violence and the other clothes you against your wishes.

"Hack" can be used in a lot of valid ways without implying that non-computer-people are hackers.

If pg thought painters __were__ hackers the book would be called "Hackers: Painters, Programmers, and Socially Manipulative Psychopaths"

Unfortunately, yes. "Hackers and Painters" is a rather famous instance of that particular non-analogy. Given that you've published a book under this title, however, I doubt that there's any point in debating the issue here.

So I'll just say, even if painters and architects are hackers (to which I strongly object, but hey), including screenwriters such as Sorkin goes one or two steps too far. There's a line, and crossing it just makes "hacker" semantically arbitrary.

I don't think I ever applied the word "hacker" in that book to anyone except programmers. Or in anything else I've written: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+hacker

>>"Hackers and Painters" is a rather famous instance of that particular non-analogy.

>I don't think I ever applied the word "hacker" in that book to anyone except programmers.

This is called a "non-denial denial".

It's called a denial of the actual claim (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840270) instead of the one he tried to turn it into when called on it.

Man, today is one of those days I wish I'd never even started posting comments on HN.

I see your point now.

Don't feed the trolls.

I think the creative process across all disciplines has more similarities than differences.

Everyone likes to think they are a beautiful and unique little snowflake. Nobody likes the reality that they aren't.

Further, regardless of the writers' ability to relate to hackers they still need to write stuff that appeals to people. Most people don't enjoy just building things like hackers do.

The writers I know have a pile of unsold or uncompleted scripts and stories. They were experiments, or drafts, or betas (if you like). Often they're working on several things at once, sometimes just with friends for kicks.

They're driven to create also (characters, plots).

I'd say one difference is, it's easy to hold a steady job as a programmer, but as a writer you have to really work the business side. It does change the emphasis sometimes from creating to selling.

It may be that Sorkin understands the need to create things, but he doesn't seem to have identified that in his subject. Instead he's given him only nasty motivations -- most of them about a surly nerd's revenge against the social system.

Sorkin has said that he's more interested in being faithful to an idea and a story, not to the events as they happened. Seems kind of ironic, since the movie accuses its "Mark Zuckerberg" of being callous to how reputations can be affected forever by public depictions.

There's not a lot of "let's do this just to do it" going on in Hollywood. Think about it: at it's root level, the film business is FAR more money driven than the tech community at large is (Silicon Valley can be just as nasty as Hollywood, but that's not everyone). Hollywood is structured in such a way that doesn't reward collaboration and sharing (at all) but instead rewards exclusivity and cut throat behavior at every level. There isn't exactly a large and thriving open source film making movement out there. Very few outsiders are breaking into Hollywood in the way they are in the tech world.

You're wrong.

>>Silicon Valley can be just as nasty as Hollywood, but that's not everyone.

Hollywood's not everyone. There are thriving filmmaking communities in just about every large city on earth. They don't all have the same mass appeal as Hollywood vehicles, just as small town startups rarely have the same appeal as Silicon Valley companies, but they're there, and they're vibrant. Furthermore, the very definition of avant-garde cinema is, to some degree, "let's do this just do this just to do it".

>>There isn't exactly a large and thriving open source film making movement out there.

It's called independent film, and the number of participants has skyrocketed in the last decade. Sure, they fantasize about it becoming a major hit like Paranormal Activity, just as every startup founder and his iguana fantasizes about being Google. But that doesn't mean they aren't making movies just cos they like making them.

I suspect a person like Sorkin appreciates the drive to "create art" for no other motivation than to create, but I think the disconnect is the failure to recognize a work such as Facebook (or anything IT related) as a work worthy of the same motivation. I think some people see such a work (stripped of all wealth, fame, and power) as about as noble a calling as mowing a lawn. Thus the necessity to juice up that part of The Social Network with drugs, women, and parties.

"Hollywood doesn't understand" means that it can't be conveyed in the Hollywood medium, not that a particular artist in Hollywood doesn't understand it.

It's not that they can't imagine it in Hollywood - they can, but it would just make for a much more boring movie. I think the fact they made a good movie is much more important than accurately portraying how facebook came to be. That's for Zuck's memoirs to explain, some day.

As my grandfather always said: There are no true or false stories, only good ones and bad ones.

I have to wonder if Zuckerberg saw the same movie I did. It was crystal-clear that his character in the movie was motivated by the same Wow, wouldn't it be cool if... impulse that he's saying was absent.

The writer of the movie seems to disagree with you.

Sorkin writes: "It was a revenge stunt, aimed first at the woman who'd most recently broke his heart (who should get some kind of medal for not breaking his head) and then at the entire female population of Harvard."

This page is obligatory reading on this debate (previously posted to HN): http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2010/10/aaron-sorkin-responds-...

Now, I'm not saying what did or did not drive Zuckerberg - but Sorkin, who wrote the Zuckerberg character, thought the character was motivated by revenge.

The interpretation of the movie should be based on the movie, not on a snippet of a blog comment by the writer.

It may have begun as a revenge stunt, but somewhere between the $1 and $25,000,000,000 valuation points, it was no longer a revenge stunt.

MZ would have lost interest at about the $12 point if it were just about revenge, and I think the typical viewer will understand that.

I 100% Agree. There is a difference between "it all started with a revenge stunt" (the lawyer say something like this at the end of the movie) and "I worked all these years motivated by a revenge stunt".

What the typical Hollywood writer doesn't understand is the computer people up north also build things for fun. They understand the idea of doing something for fun, but seem to think it only happens in the film/TV industry.

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