How Nerds Became Assholes
The first five minutes of the film The Social Network tells you what this movie is about. It’s right there in the last thing Rooney Mara’s character says after breaking up with Zuckerberg:
You are probably going to be a very successful computer person, but you’re gonna go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd, and I want you to know from the bottom of my heart that that won’t be true. It will be because you’re an asshole.
The Social Network is a film about assholes. Particularly about assholes with power. It’s a movie based on the book The Accidental Billionaires, a book that’s been accused of being more fan-fiction than non-fiction. But these details don’t really matter because the story mirrors the truth about our current culture on how we give a pass to assholes.
Every character in this movie, with the exception of the Eduardo Saverin character played by Andrew Garfield, is an asshole. The Winklevoss twins are assholes, Sean Parker is an asshole, and of course the Zuckerberg character is the main asshole in the movie. Zuckerberg’s whole arc is about climbing up the hierarchy. And he is able to do this by being a total asshole. He steals the Harvard Connection idea from the ‘Winklevi’, betrays Saverin, and gets rewarded for it.
Zuckerberg is a sort of anti-hero, certainly not a hero. The character wasn’t really that complicated like the Danny Boyle Steve Jobs film. He was simply just an asshole and I think that’s what makes the film brilliant.
A while ago I discovered Max Joseph’s short documentary DICKS: Do you need to be one to be a successful leader. The TLDR on the video is that Joseph interviews different people, particularly movie directors, on what’s their stance on this idea and in the end he concludes that sometimes you have to be a bit of a dick to be a good leader.
I think that conclusion is true to an extent, but this is more a matter of perception than an actual personality trait that’s needed to be a good leader. You can be obsessive, visionary, smart, confident and not be an asshole. It’s certainly difficult to avoid being perceived as a dick, and even an asshole. That’s a fair argument. But most of the good leaders are benevolent dictators. People signed up to have that relationship with them. There’s a key difference between being an asshole and being assertive, confident, and sometimes having to to make decision that others don’t like.
The problem is that our culture has taken this idea that in order to be successful, not just in leadership, but in life, you have to be an asshole to it’s extreme. This explains Linus Torvalds, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, David Heinemeier Hansson, and so on. We went from Mathew Broderick in War Games to Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Super Pumped. From nerds to tech-bros.
We have so many people that get away with being an extreme douchebag because apparently you have to be that way. But these aren’t just “dicks”. These people are pathological assholes.
In the Max Joseph documentary there’s an interview with Aaron James, author of the book Assholes: A Theory. He defines an asshole as “someone with an entrenched sense of entitlement” and that definition hits the nail on the head so hard and so beautifully.
We’re in an era where the archetype of the successful asshole is not only accepted but celebrated. It’s a new myth. While tales of ruthless ambition and abrasive behavior captivate and inspire, they also reflect a troubling acceptance of entitlement and disregard for others. But we need to champion nerds who embody integrity and empathy as much as they do vision and assertiveness, society can foster a new paradigm of success — one rooted in respect and responsibility rather than entitlement and exploitation.