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Comment by _Understated_ | Hacker News Reader

I've often wondered if Mark Zuckerberg has anyone in his inner corporate circle that is willing to say "no" to him.

Meta seems like there was a wall of post-it notes in Zuck's office with a bunch of ideas to stop FB from becoming MySpace and the dart he threw landed on this one.

My gut tells me that Meta is dead in the water but with the billions that FB have in their war chest I wouldn't bet against it completely, however, the fact it requires a headset, a massive source of friction, will restrict the audience.

I dunno... seems like Zuck is living in a fantasy world here.

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Huh, that's a neat idea. What if Zuck is this generation's George Lucas?

For context, after the success of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, it's said that Lucas surrounded himself with yes-men who agreed with whatever he said. Anyone who wasn't one of those didn't last long in his inner circle.

The end result was "Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace". There's an hour-long review video by "Mr Plinkett"[0] that dives into the all the major issues of the film, along with some honestly-not-great humour (imho) but at the end it really explains what the problem was: Lucas had absolute control, and everyone did what he said. And if the original Star Wars had been that way it would have been a disaster.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgWcNsdmoyE&t=3677s (The whole video is good, but linking directly to the important bit I mentioned).

There is also an official documentary about the making of episode 1 that is viewable on YouTube.[0] Even though this was produced as promotional material for the film's DVD release, Lucas' total control and hubristic self regard are barely concealed subtexts. There is a great scene where Spielberg is visiting Lucas on set and they are just repeating to each other "It'll be great!" or some such platitude with forced enthusiasm. Even Lucas seemed to know he was out of his depth.

[0] https://youtu.be/da8s9m4zEpo

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