It’s a weird era for social media. Even as many of us spend more and more time scrolling, we know that this habit is less in the five-veg-a-day and eight-hours-of-sleep category, and more in the cigarettes and alcohol bracket. A new crop of films, shedding light on the innovators behind these apps, only drive that point home.
In the recently released The Social Reckoning, a semi-sequel to 2010’s The Social Network, Oscar winner Mikey Madison plays Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, with The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White her journalist contact. Opposite them, Succession’s Jeremy Strong is channelling all the charm and warmth of a wet mop to play Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg.
‘When I wrote The Social Network, Facebook was still a site,’ writer-director Aaron Sorkin told Times Radio. ‘It became something else entirely, a calamity that would set the world on fire. I think the idea behind it was noble, but it is a failed experiment.’ With extremist groups rising and disinformation rife, it’s hard to argue. Haugen’s leak contributed to the recent US court case against Meta that alleged knowing harm to children and teens. The company settled for an eye-watering $17bn.
Elsewhere in the industry, Elon Musk, owner of X and Tesla, is the subject of a four-hour documentary (Musk) covering his quest to become the first trillionaire, and his campaign to dismantle foreign aid along the way. It sounds like cartoon villainy, but Musk is not a very funny baddie.
Then there’s You Can See Everything (in UK cinemas 20 November), Nathan Fielder’s film about Elizabeth Holmes, a rare female tech founder who, alas, girl-bossed her way to a fraud conviction. Meanwhile Andrew Garfield will star in Artificial, the story of AI booster Sam Altman. Even The Devil Wears Prada 2 had a tech villain.
At heart, social media is no longer very social and it’s barely media. Our feeds can feel like an endless stream of ads chosen by the algorithm. Meanwhile, the AI cheerleaders merrily promise their creation will steal our jobs and possibly end civilisation in some sort of Terminator scenario. No wonder this autumn’s films suggest we should keep our eyes not on our phones, but on these billionaire entrepreneurs. Just one more quick video first…