What The Zuck?

A look at the rise of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, his tumultuous 2018 and the future of the social media network.

- Stephen Corby

Does being a billionaire, and we’re talking about so many billions you could burn through one each year and still not run out, make you untouchable?

Surely not, you’d hope, and yet it does allow you to contort reality somewhat, to have opprobrium, or bad publicity, flow around you, as if you are some kind of dark star.

It probably helps if you’re a robot, too, but more of that shortly.

This ability to control events, or at least perception of them, is not just a result of material wealth – even if you’re the world’s fourth-richest man, valued at US$60.3 billion, as Mark Zuckerberg is – it’s about surrounding yourself with the very best people that your lovely money can buy.

And it’s why, as difficult as things were for the embattled Zuckerberg in 2018 – who, as he battled Facebook’s various scandals, had started appearing in public dressed as ‘the defendant’ rather than the youthful delinquent he used to look like – it’s still likely that he’ll float magically away from the ominous clouds encircling him.

Consider how good the spin doctors around Zuckerberg – the CEO of a company that needs no introduction and wastes more of our valuable time than reality-TV, commuting and supermarket queues combined, and which you’ve probably looked at three times today already – must be.

SAVING FACE

One of the most incredible feats that Zuckerberg and his cohort have pulled off is redeeming his public persona, time and again, yet no more so than after the release of the incredible movie that chronicles his seemingly soulless climb to global domination, The Social Network, came out, in 2010.