I saw the movie "Social Network" yesterday. The movie is a semi-real/semi-fictional biopic of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and youngest billionaire in the world. The movie held back no punches and showed Mark as this brilliant guy, super programmer who was also fueled by naked ambition and unfettered by any apparent sense of morality.
Unlike some of my friends however, this movie didn't make me "hate" him. Note that this hate is really more of a "dislike" (a feature not on Facebook, at least not yet). I found myself admiring his brilliance, which I guess almost everyone does; found myself respecting his naked ambition, which I guess many of us would do; but quite disturbingly, I found myself almost jealous of this freedom that being amoral gives you.
In the opening scene, (date break up) which in my opinion is the best scene in the movie, his erstwhile girlfriend says to him "Please don't think I'm breaking up with you because you are a nerd, its because you're an a$$hole". My fellow nerds (and geeks) I'd say that there are many good people out there who do not judge us, lets not be d-bags for their sakes.
On similar lines, I wonder if many of us (and nerds especially) feel the reason they haven't made it big like Mark is because they can't be so openly amoral. Maybe amorality is necessary to making it big, one doesn't know, but there are lots of sociopaths out there who are losers even in the economic and power stakes.
In the end its all about being a better you.
Ok, now that I've seen the movie, I can actually comment on this post. Yes, the movie didn't make me hate him either. People don't become rich/successful without making certain choices. Don't know about being "openly" amoral, but being "too nice" certainly gets in the way of being successful sometimes.
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