
Sean Parker: "The Social Network" is a complete work of fiction - rblion
http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/01/23/sean-parker-the-social-network-is-a-complete-work-of-fiction/
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numair
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.

~~~
andrewljohnson
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.

~~~
numair
<http://public.numair.com/2006_parker.html>

~~~
thinkcomp
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.

~~~
numair
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.)

~~~
thinkcomp
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.

~~~
geebee
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".

~~~
thinkcomp
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...](http://www.quora.com/The-Social-Network-2010-Movie/What-parts-of-the-
The-Social-Network-movie-are-accurate-and-which-are-not)

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corin_
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.

~~~
hugh3
Or just

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

which removes the need for the brackets.

~~~
joelmichael
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.

~~~
hugh3
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.

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diego_moita
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?

~~~
hugh3
_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?

~~~
epochwolf
> _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.

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

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davidmathers
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-...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/221242/sean-parker-would-rather-be-
partying)

~~~
hugh3
It sounds like Sean Parker the character and Sean Parker the real person
aren't entirely dissimilar, then.

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twidlit
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.

~~~
epochwolf
Careful with that line of thinking.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation>

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neilk
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.

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37prime
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.

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brc
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.

~~~
trevelyan
> "He is the protagonist to Eduardo"

You mean "foil"?

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yardie
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.

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

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

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citricsquid
who'da thunk it?

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elvirs
Parker must have hated the cocaine and underage girls scenes.

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

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

