Enough with the Mark Zuckerberg Love
If I hear "Hot Zuck Summer" again I'm gonna puke
A disturbing trend has emerged over the past week: The media can’t stop writing about how great Mark Zuckerberg is doing.
The Wall Street Journal is suggesting Mark Zuckerberg might be “cool again.” “Mark Zuckerberg’s comeback is in full swing,” proclaimed Business Insider, or Insider, or whatever the fuck it’s called. Axios declared it a “Hot Zuck Summer.”
Enough.
Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is having a better year than Elon Musk. This is like saying your local Arby’s is doing better than an abandoned Burger King that has been taken over by Ebola-infected rats.
“Elon Musk is making Mark Zuckerberg seem cool again.” Yeah no shit. Would you rather have a glass of Mountain Dew or lukewarm horse diarrhea?
Is that an endorsement of Mountain Dew?
One of the primary pieces of evidence that Mark Zuckerberg is Cool Now is a shirtless photo he shared. Mark Zuckerberg took up jiu jitsu in his 30s, which is, in and of itself, not cool.
He then went on the social media platofrm he owns and shared a photo of himself with his shirt off, which is, again — not something a Cool person would do. But then: Here is the photo that has the Media World in a tizzy.
I’m sorry. But this is the most divorced a married man has ever looked.
Anyone who still uses Facebook recognizes this photo. This is a photograph of a middle-aged man who is cheating on his wife with his 26-year-old secretary.
This is a photograph of a man who is about to buy a yellow Corvette.
This is a photograph that says, “If you checked my DMs you would find nothing but winky-face emojis sent to younger women.”
Here is an Iron Law I have learned from two decades on Facebook: If you are 39 years old and married with two children, you do not get this ripped unless you are deeply unhappy.
Which is fine! If my life’s work had been a major factor in a genocide, I would be unhappy, too.
There’s nothing wrong with being unhappy. A lot of us are.
But the Wall Street Journal does not look at our coping mechanisms and declare us “cool.”
The other piece of evidence that Mark Zuckerberg Is Rising is the “runaway success” of Threads.
I am not convinced Threads is, in fact, a runaway success. It has certainly been successful with at least two groups: Disaffected Journalists and Brands That Say “No Cap”.
Those are, in fact, still the only two kinds of posts I see when I open Threads. I don’t see the fullness that makes a social network pop: I don’t see normal people; I don’t see comedy; I don’t see sports; I don’t see shitposters.
I do see a lot of spam, which might be a good sign? If Eastern European con artists think your site is popular enough to target, maybe it is a runaway success.
But even if Threads is “Crushing Twitter in the Bussy” or whatever The Economist is planning to write this week, I remain unconvinced that Mark Zuckerberg is somehow Cool now.
“Hot Zuck Summer” is one of the most repellant phrases I have heard in a long time. It is an updated version of those Paul Ryan cool guy weightlifting photos in Time:
This man supported a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage. You cannot make him seem cool by putting him in a backwards cap.
Same goes for “Zuck.” Real journalists have detailed his many sins as CEO of Facebook. (Note: These are not cool sins, like the kind John Wick has. You do not get tattoos to repent for these sins.)
This guy won’t be cool. His business might thrive, he may become a trillionaire, and we might see more of his mid-life crisis six-pack.
But coolness will elude this man forever. Please stop making me read the phrase “Hot Zuck Summer.”