Mark Zuckerberg: Beyond Chutzpah

by on Sep.17, 2010, under general

Must admit that my blood boiled a bit on the very first page of the CQR white paper at this:

“The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly” because of the dominance of social network sites — where people use their real names — and the extent to which information is now shared online, said Zuckerberg. That’s good, he said, because “having two identities for your- self is an example of a lack of integrity.”

(emphasis mine)

When I was in high school, I once gave a presentation on the Watergate scandal, in which I referred to Nixon as “for lack of a better word, a scumbag.” A few conservative teachers on the panel mildly reprimanded me, arguing that, whatever shortcomings Nixon may have had as a human being and political leader, surely there must be better, more precise, and more meaningful words than scumbag.

But sometimes, you have to call a spade a spade, and a scumbag a scumbag. And Mark Zuckerberg, for lack of a better word, is a scumbag. There are perhaps better, more precise, more meaningful ways to describe someone who, after citing as justification the evisceration of privacy of which he is the prime butcher, has the nerve to say that those who wish to keep their contexts intact have a “lack of integrity.”

I could go on, for some time, for how conceptually incorrect this is (but I think I’ve written enough about that in Losing Face), and for how absolutely richly pathetic it is for someone whose fame and fortune derives from a stolen business (itself founded in order to take petty potshots at a girl with the good sense to turn him down for a date) to accuse others of a “lack of integrity.”

But brevity is the key to writing as well as wit, and so I’ll happily settle to call him a scumbag.

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3 comments for this entry:
  1. Mark Zuckerberg: Beyond Chutzpah v2 - Chris Peterson

    […] by chris on Jun.13, 2011, under general Following up on this post of mine: […]

  2. The Facebook Disease: Real Identity, Radical Transparency, and Randi Zuckerberg - Chris Peterson

    […] Another such symptom is Facebook’s love of radical transparency. Read danah boyd on Facebook and radical transparency before you read any more of me, but the practical upshot is that Zuckerberg – Mark this time – has said repeatedly that, basically, the world would be better off if everybody was open about everything all of the time, and that anything short of that was a “lack of integrity”. […]

  3. Ed

    A Jew who is a thief and profits and usurps into power? Noooooo. Say it ain’t so!
    Unethical scumbag Jewry as per usual.

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