Sean Parker: "The Social Network" is a complete work of fiction | Hacker News Reader

Sean Parker: "The Social Network" is a complete work of fiction

thenextweb.com

95 pointsrblion51 comments

This is sort of a bunch of BS, but I think it shows what a great guy Parker is underneath it all. Eduardo was a real asshole to Parker for a long time (please do remember that Eduardo was the guy who basically dictated the story in that cheap book), which I never understood -- after all, it was Parker's mad genius that created most of Eduardo's wealth. Perhaps Eduardo has finally gotten over himself and "forgiven" Parker for making him a billionaire, since this re-writing of history is far from how things were even 6 months ago.

The movie wasn't all that inaccurate. Sean Parker is crazy. The thing you don't see in the movie, however, is that Parker's craziness is actually what made Facebook successful, and what took it from being another boring nerd project to the center of modern culture.

You write like you have some authority on this issue. Are you a Facebook insider?

Obviously the movie is a work of fiction, but how do _you_ know it was Sean Parker that made Facebook? I always assumed it was Zuck, Moskowitz, and the rest of their cadre.

http://public.numair.com/2006_parker.html

After reading this I still don't really know who you are, but I was there at Harvard for a good part of it, and it's well-established that the movie is not accurate, nor is the book that it's based on.

This may come as a complete surprise to you, but the fact that you went to Harvard doesn't mean you know shit about what it takes to build a successful social network, or what made Facebook successful.

The guy who created the photo system on Facebook didn't go to Harvard.

The guy who invented photo tagging didn't go to Harvard (hell, he didn't even work at Facebook...).

The guy who cut the deals to fiendishly import contacts from various large IM/mail networks didn't go to Harvard.

The guy who designed the site and made it usable didn't go to Harvard.

The guy who kept the site from melting down didn't go to Harvard.

I know you think you are somehow directly responsible for the success of Facebook, but you aren't. Very little of the success of Facebook has anything to do with the people who went to Harvard. The difference is, the quiet guys who created most of the innovations that define the way we interact today don't suffer from whatever sort of insecurity they breed in the admissions pool at universities like Harvard that causes people like you to spend all of your time striving for recognition rather than quietly innovating and enjoying the impact of your work. You, Eduardo, the Winkelvoss twins... All of you want to feel important, to be recognized. It's nuts. It makes no sense. But again, you went to Harvard, you know about this better than I do.

This is the first and last thing I will say about all of this, but do understand that I'm simply the only one willing to say what many have been thinking for quite some time -- mainly because I am so far removed from the drama of it all that my opinion is worthless.

(I should note that there are a lot of great people who have gone to Harvard, and a lot of great people who went to Harvard work at Facebook -- there's just an incredible number of people who come out of there who feel compelled to convince everyone else of how great they are.)

You, Eduardo, the Winkelvoss twins... All of you want to feel important, to be recognized. It's nuts. It makes no sense. But again, you went to Harvard, you know about this better than I do.

Give me a break. Desire for recognition is, if not universal, at least common enough that you don't need to infer ridiculous bullshit about Harvard's entire undergrad population to explain a couple instances of it.

My point, which you missed, was this: you said the movie "wasn't all that inaccurate," which I know to be untrue from first-hand experience. There are several significant inaccuracies, which are compounded by your response above.

I think the problem is that you didn't identify or give any additional information about the inaccuracies. Instead, you allude to first hand experience without saying what it is or how you obtained it (aside from being at Harvard at the time).

This reminds me of a New Yorker lawyer cartoon: A lawyer is facing a jury with the caption "ladies and gentlemen, I've been a lawyer for over 20 years, and either my client is innocent or I'm very much mistaken".

Given that what Numair wrote in response didn't address the issue of inaccuracies in the movie at all, I disagree--the problem seems to be something else entirely.

I've written about the movie here:

http://www.quora.com/The-Social-Network-2010-Movie/What-part...

At first I was confused about why you were addressing the parent poster like that; this may provide some background for others:

http://www.aarongreenspan.com/letter/index.html

FWIW, when Facebook went big in 2005 as it started spreading across schools, CMS'es PHPNuke, Mambo, Xoops, Drupal, Joomla, Post Nuke and many more had been around for years. They were and are called CMS'es first, but really they are social networks too. I was customizing Xoops in 2003 and there were a lot of modules to choose, which could have easily done exactly what FB was doing at the time. FB packaged it up nicely and broke into the cool people first.

> and broke into the cool people first.

They didn't get there first... They got there when the people and the technology was right.

With HTML5, what opportunities do you see open up?

I suppose the idea in creating wealth is about catalyzing a number of similar and different new technologies first and best to meet an unmet or latent human need. Rather than catching a single wave, it's about sitting atop a standing wave generated by many.

Like in the Civilization game, new wonders have prerequisite technologies, and then new opportunities open up.

> doesn't mean you know shit about what it takes to build a successful social network

I am having a Digg feeling as I read these threads.

I also believe very little of the success of Facebook comes from the people who work(ed) on Facebook. Facebook's value comes from its user base, as does its success. Facebook got good enough at just the right time while lots of others failed to attract users. To claim its designers had some secret insight on how social networks functioned that was high above the level of understanding of others is risky.

BTW, there's just too much drama here.

And, before anyone asks, I didn't go to Harvard either.

... and when I get downvoted for saying this "you know shit" arrogance, it gets even more Digg-ish.

Please, kids, go play in your room with your toys. Stop bothering the adults.

A small point, but one that really irks me because so many websites do it.

  *in his own words, "the movie is a complete work of fiction."*

Actually they weren't his own words, they were words that TNW added in to give it context. They should have written:

  *in his own words, "[the movie is] a complete work of fiction."*

You can't take two different parts of what somebody said and stich them together, even if it makes it more clear what was meant, it's still misquoting.

edit: Same point about the other quotes they take, most of them are edited away from his actual wording.

Or just

in his own words, the movie is "a complete work of fiction."

which removes the need for the brackets.

Fair enough, amended

Even this seems like oversimplifying it, because it removes all of the hedging he did prior to dropping the bomb. Removed from the context, it comes off as bitter.

Well, I think he has every right to be bitter. If someone made a universally-acclaimed movie in which I was portrayed as a complete jerk (or even a slightly different type of jerk from the jerk I really am) then I'd be annoyed about it too.

Regardless of what Parker says, isn't it obvious that the movie forces too much in the most elemental Hollywood clichés? There are many scenes in the movie that show the manipulation:

* A bus full of hot girls arriving to be used for sex

* A programming competition where the crowd cheers at each line of coded Python. The coders drink a shot to commemorate.

* The hero hacks one site in one night when drunk and in 2 hours it crashes the network

* All nerds are socially inept but still Zuck has psychological insights about what the site needs to succeed.

* Teenagers outsmarting experienced lawyers with witty responses.

* Sex, booze and testosterone is what drives every man.

Really?

The hero hacks one site in one night when drunk and in 2 hours it crashes the network

That bit actually happened, right?

A programming competition where the crowd cheers at each line of coded Python. The coders drink a shot to commemorate

Naah, they cheer every time someone takes a shot. That sounds much more plausible.

All nerds are socially inept but still Zuck has psychological insights about what the site needs to succeed.

That sounds kinda like reality too. Actually the combination of second-by-second ineptness in direct social interaction combined with a reasonable rational-mind level grasp of what people want does seem to be characteristic of quite a lot of successful geeky types.

Teenagers outsmarting experienced lawyers with witty responses.

Yes, the Sorkinesque dialogue certainly falls into the heightened-reality category. But a film with fully realistic dialogue including a realistic number of "um"s and "ah"s and false starts would be pretty damn dull.

A bus full of hot girls arriving to be used for sex

Not "to be used for sex", they're just there to attend a party. The portrayal of the final clubs did seem a little over-the-top, though... I'm sure they're not nearly that awesome in real life.

Sex, booze and testosterone is what drives every man

It isn't?

> Sex, booze and testosterone is what drives every man

> It isn't?

Some of us aren't so shallow and self-centered. It grieves me that people live like that.

insisting you aren't shallow and self centered is just another mating strategy.

>"A bus full of hot girls arriving to be used for sex"

At my college the freshmen girls walked more than mile to get to frat houses or apartment parties thrown by older and frequently wealthier students, knowing full well that their hosts weren't giving that beer away as charity. Once you get to "girls in real life are willing go to parties to drink and possibly hook up with guys", it's a short step to going out of their way to party with the more privileged guys.

>The hero hacks one site in one night when drunk and in 2 hours it crashes the network

It was built in one day. It took slightly longer to propagate and get shut-down, but its method of propagation (email lists), massive traffic (though not network-crushingly so), and the end result (Ad board) were accurate. It shouldn't be surprising that the movie compressed the timeline - after all, there's over a year of story told in 2 hours.

Hey, at least no one hacked into a mainframe.

Sorkin replied to the sexism allegation: http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/aaron-sorkin-on-social-netwo...

"I didn't invent the "F--k Truck", it's real -- and the men (boys) at the final clubs think it's what they deserve for being who they are. (It's only fair to note that the women -- bussed in from other schools for the "hot" parties, wait on line to get on that bus without anyone pointing guns at their heads.)

These women--whether it's the girls who are happy to take their clothes off and dance for the boys or Eduardo's psycho-girlfriend are real. I mean REALLY real."

He's slightly misrepresenting the Fuck Truck which is the (legitimate) shuttle bus that goes from Wellesley College (an all-girls school) to Harvard and MIT, rather than some sort of special purpose direct-to-sexy-party charter.

Sean Parker was one of Nick Denton's favorite subjects back in the Valleywag days. e.g.:

This friend showed up with her boss for the meeting, and Parker was nowhere to be found. The receptionist said Parker hadn't been there all day, she didn't know where he was, and didn't know how to reach him, and suggested they wait. So wait they did — for nearly an hour, at which point a bedraggled looking Parker showed up wearing sunglasses and looking unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed.

Undaunted, they began the meeting, hoping to close the deal that day. Barely a few minutes into the meeting, Parker interrupted the AllPosters exec's presentation and said he couldn't concentrate, volunteering that the reason he couldn't concentrate was that he'd just woken up — he said he'd been up all night partying with some "friends" he had met out at a club. He then proudly took out his camera phone, called up some pictures of he and a friend in various states of undress with tawdry-looking topless girls, and asked "what do you think — pretty hot, huh?" as he slid the phone across the table to them.

http://valleywag.gawker.com/221242/sean-parker-would-rather-...

It sounds like Sean Parker the character and Sean Parker the real person aren't entirely dissimilar, then.

I have a feeling that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Sean Parker has a lot to gain by dismissing his portrayal as fiction. While Eduardo Saverin has lots of reason to demonize him, I would think it has some grain of truth to it. After all, if Parker is such a swell guy, why is he kicked out of every company he founded?

For the movie, I think Sorkin just created one dimensional people from character nuggets to serve the story he was trying to weave.

Careful with that line of thinking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

A tangent to this: I happened to look at Eduardo Saverin's Wikipedia page today, and there's this ongoing problem of people rewriting it to reflect what happened in the movie. Because they sincerely believe it's accurate, I guess.

In the movie, Aaron Sorkin has one of his characters deliver a strong rebuke about how blogging can cause permanent damage to reputation. But he himself doesn't seem to feel the same responsibility when writing a major Hollywood picture.

The movie "Social Network" is a Fiction inspired by real life event. The story itself was re-created from pieces of one sided stories and some publicly available records.

The movie would be really boring if it were following the real life story. Aaron Sorkin is making it into a movie, not a re-enactment.

During the productions, many of the crews were laughing when they heard Justin Timberlake was cast as Sean Parker. Especially for those who know of Sean Parker based on their research and personal knowledge. David Fincher is really particular about making this movie, because it is his passion.

Consider "The Social Network" as a movie inspired but not based on true event.

I'm not surprised by this. In fact prior to sitting down to look at HN I was reading 'the accidental billionaires' while (ahem) taking care of business. Of all the characters portrayed in the film (and book), Parker is the one played by the 'star'. It is him that is shown to have a lavish lifestyle of drinking and womanising. He is the protagonist to Eduardo, he is the one caught by the cops. Clearly the book and thus film is heavily slanted towards Eduardo's point of view - the others didn't contribute - so Parker probably got off the worst.

I've no idea of the level of fiction, but clearly his character must have a fair bit of it. And if it were me, I'd be making sure that level of doubt was clearly established in people's minds.

> "He is the protagonist to Eduardo"

You mean "foil"?

Sean Parker sort of reminds of a couple of guys that lived in the neighborhood I grew up in. If you ever saw the documentary Cocaine Cowboys these are those guys. Guys with humble beginnings as pilots and fishermen (in the 80s before the war on drugs got the DEA AWACS and nightvision) that stumbled onto something that made them insanely rich. After hearing their stories about 80s Miami and reading stories about Parker I can totally draw the parallels between them.

Its quite possible that most of the other characters were fictional but the writer seems to have nailed him.

That's probably why it made such a good movie. Hard to imagine how boring the real-life version would be.

Jeez, is everyone a god damn expert on Facebook now?

who'da thunk it?

Parker must have hated the cocaine and underage girls scenes.

guess it's been a while since Parker was in the news ..

Couldn't have imagined those two (Parker and Coelho) talking about Facebook.

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