Creative license run amok...

If the previews for "The Social Network" movie are to believed, Mark Zuckerberg is the reincarnation of James Dean and Chuck Norris combined.

I have no doubt Zuckerberg has learned a bit of media savvy over the years. When you're head of a huge company like "Facebook," I'm sure you have to. But the thought that he was being a rebel from the get-go - and in the middle of disciplinary hearings - is taking it a bit too far. If I were in front of the Harvard disciplinary committee with charges of theft and breaking into their network, I'm at least sweating a bit. Chances are good I'm needing a change of underwear afterward.

I'm certainly not going to be rude and mocking the committee members during the questioning.

Facebook is an Empire - I'm not denying that. But I was there. Its formative years were nothing like what that movie make them out to be. Facebook is not a crime family. Its founder is certainly not the don. He's probably just a big as of a nerd as I am. I bet we'd even hang out.

For my part, I'm on Zuckerberg's side on this...to an extent. I agree with him in the sense that he probably wasn't as big of a jerk as they make him out to be. Then again, I also don't think he was partying like a rock star, getting groupies and having conversations with anyone who looked anything like Justin Timberlake.

Of course, I'm sure a movie about the real story would have been really dull. I'd much rather have seen a movie about the founding of "Myspace." It could have used the tag line: "You don't get to 50 million friends - and 750 million more fake accounts used to post pornographic photos and hit on girls (and guys) you don't know - without making a few enemies."

It's a bit wordy - I'll work on it.

Slowly Warming Water

For those of you not paying attention, August is the first stretch of seven days in a long time that Facebook hasn’t been involved in some sort of privacy scandal.

It seems like every few minutes, a news story comes out. Too many people have your details. The site was hacked. Playing applications reduces work productivity. Future workplaces skim your profile for pictures of inappropriate behavior. By the time the story drops that Mark Zuckerberg once stole a baby panda’s ice cream just to watch it cry, I really won’t be too surprised.

The bottom line is that I’ve really stopped caring at this point. My more alarmist friends say this is exactly the problem. Facebook – social networking site and, apparently, secret shadow government – has me right where it wants me now.

My friends put it this way. They claim that the easiest way to kill a frog is to put it in a bathtub and slowly heat the water. This concerns me because, a) It suggests people have actively invested effort into how to kill frogs – one of the world’s least threatening creatures. And, b) It suggests my friends have personally tested this.

The idea (beyond the creepy analogy) is that people will get used to anything if they’re exposed to it slowly. Do you use Facebook? Have you used it for more than three years? Well, if the conspiracy theories are to be believed, you’re in the middle of a very warm tub of water.

I actually see why people say this. After all, my friends still talk about what they were doing when they instituted the feeds to show your friends every trivial activity you did on the site. Believe me. If JFK had been shot later that day, it would have been the second story on the evening news.

More recently, the site creator said his users were idiots for trusting him with our personal details – something far more outraging – and I barely heard about it.

But I don’t think people are getting complacent. They probably just don’t care. I mean, does Facebook really know enough about you to be dangerous? Sure, it has your name and school, but that’s public knowledge. Even if criminals got my social security number, my credit is probably lousy. What are they going to do with my personal information – be declined for credit cards?

And consider this. The Internet was never designed to keep secrets. As far as hiding places go, it’s about as bad as engraving your personal details on the surface of the moon. If you wanted your information hidden, why put it on the most visible place imaginable?

Your details – and that picture from college of you kissing that “girl” with the really big hands at a party – are as accessible as you want to make them.

In the meanwhile, I say we just sit back and enjoy the ride. Join a few groups. Add a few people from countries you’ve never heard of. And if you get a minute, try to work on a replacement for that old “frog-boiling” story. We really need a better analogy for that one.