Comments | penguinparity: You all are hilarious sometimes.

penguinparity

You all are hilarious sometimes.

Jan 25, 2011 17:50

Dear writers of The Social Network fic,
While I find your desire to mock Farmville in many of your stories sometimes amusing, let's clear something up. Farmville, like nearly every other application - especially games, is not run nor developed by Facebook. It's developed by a third party company for use within Facebook's website. Your desire to ( Read more... )

fandumb, tsn: lawyer up asshole

Comments 16

sharksdontsleep January 26 2011, 02:17:26 UTC

BB, you rock. I'm not sure if I've made fun of Farmville in a story (I probably did), but this made me laugh. Out loud, even. MWAH.

penguinparity January 26 2011, 02:49:42 UTC

It doesn't even bother me that people are mocking the game, it's more how that mocking is inserted into the narrative. I've read at least 4 or 5 stories that explicitly involve Mark writing code for/fixing bugs with Farmville. More likely, he was probably involved in creating the Facebook Platform and Facebook Markup Language (think HTML and/or a programing language specific to FB). Something that was developed and introduced before any of the games had ever been developed.

petronia January 26 2011, 02:31:46 UTC

Damn, I have not even seen this movie but if only Livejournal had a reblog button. XDDDD

penguinparity January 26 2011, 02:52:14 UTC

Heh. Thanks :D

People seem to either love FV or hate it. I do have to say though, that of the people I know IRL who complain about FB games most of them were the same people proclaiming they'd never sign up for a fascist website like FB a couple of years ago. I'll be honest that's probably colored my reading of bitching about FV in fic. XD

petronia January 26 2011, 17:03:23 UTC

I play FV on and off, and fair enough if people hate it IMO - it's designed to annoy one into beat-or-join compliance! - but really I was reacting to the idea of Mark Zuckerberg developing for Zynga IN FANFICTIONS, which was quite literally the funniest thing I read all week. XD

(As opposed to, say, doing a back-of-envelope calculation on the freemium model's conversion rate, or pondering the fact that the term "social plumbing" appears in the php of the user-to-user gift system. Also, the dude who invented FV is hilarious and needs to appear in this stuff which I do not read.)

bobthetrout January 26 2011, 02:55:25 UTC

IT IS A DRAMATIZATION. Yeeeeeeesh. People need to get that it is lies and myth and FB is a business, not some altruistic site trying to get by in this horrible corporate world. Goddamn I hate that movie. It's like the fucking Gilded Age all over again.

penguinparity January 26 2011, 03:01:29 UTC

<3 you, kt.

It annoys the shit out of me that people have latched onto the "I don't care about money" part to repeat ad nauseum. Dude grew up wealthy, of course he doesn't 'care' about money, but also within the narrative of the movie the instances in which he says that it's in a defensive manner and implies he's lying.

I'm curious about this Gilded Age point, 'asplain please :D Do you mean it's an appologist story for rich people?

bobthetrout January 26 2011, 06:30:26 UTC

The gilded age was notorious for rich people riching it up and investing in crap stocks and ruining the economy while the poor people suffered, but because the media presented this awesome picture of the rich people riching it up people bought into the idea that shit was awesome instead of going to hell in a handcart. You also got this horrible marriage of government and big business interests with legislation to protect profits, not workers.

YOU KNOW HOW THIS ENDED? Great Depression.

It really feels like in the last decade or so we've been seeing a repeat of this exact pattern.

penguinparity January 26 2011, 06:50:49 UTC

I thought you were making a point about the movie itself, not our larger culture. But I completely agree that our current outlook towards business is pretty much just like the Guilded Age. Who knows if it was deliberate, but in tonight's State of the Union Obama said that the inheritors of the innovation legacy (Edison, Einstein) are GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK. Corporations, not people. Apropos, no?

Thread 5

verstehen January 26 2011, 04:51:14 UTC

You lost me after I read 'Social Network fic.' HORROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

penguinparity January 26 2011, 06:44:07 UTC

STOP JUDGING ME, GUS.

I finally got around to watching the movie last week, really only because Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay. And then, like a moth to a flame I decided to browse through some of the fic. It's a train wreck, kristit.

verstehen January 26 2011, 13:34:42 UTC

Aaron Sorkin or not, I just can't do it. I already know more than I wanna know about Mark Zuckerberg, because of my academic interests, and all signs point to "douchebag." I don't need him in my hobbies too!

penguinparity February 4 2011, 08:05:24 UTC

Hahahahaha. I actually know very little about the dude himself, thank god. But yes, what I have seen, both of the real dude and in the movie suggest douchebag like a hammer to the head.

Seriously, while watching the movie last week, I kept wondering if they were purposefully constructing the narrative of the movie to make him unsympathetic. My interaction with the fic is largely like ficbitching of old, there is lots of eye rolling and snickering.

mishaphappens March 17 2011, 05:53:29 UTC

Hello, darling! I'm going to be your cheerleader for this upcoming Merlin Big Bang! I have Gtalk, e-mail, or my journal if ever need me!

c.mishappens@gmail.com

How's it going so far? Let me know if you need any help!

penguinparity March 19 2011, 00:34:02 UTC

Yay! I'll try an email you sometime in the next couple of weeks so we can chat about my planned writing schedule and cheerleading, etc. I probably am not going to write all that much until May, as I have several long seminar papers due at the end of the semester and a Master's thesis to finish and defend before that. :)

My email/gtalk is penguinparity@gmail.com, my twitter is the same.