Were They Ever Actually Friends? - The Social Network (2010) | (Ep. 9)

Eduardo thought he had a friend. Mark thought he had an asset. The Social Network is a story about two men in different friendships. Aristotle says friendships come in three kinds. We are friends with some people because they are useful, with others because they are fun, and with a few because we actually want them to become better. Watch David Fincher's The Social Network (2010) with those categories in hand and the whole film reorganizes itself. Trent Leach and Nathaniel Boggs work through Aaron Sorkin's screenplay to argue that Mark and Eduardo were never in the same friendship. Eduardo believed he was in a friendship of virtue. Mark treated him as a friendship of utility. Neither man noticed, and everything that follows from there, the frozen accounts, the diluted shares, the deposition, grows out of that gap. When Mark finally tells Eduardo he should have suspected him, he is being cruel and accurate at the same time. Along the way: why Mark's motive looks less like money and more like status, from a joke about guys who row crew to a website whose signature feature was called a status update. Whether Sean Parker is a mentor or a predator. What the Winklevoss twins understood about honor that Mark never did. And the question underneath all of it, borrowed from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and pointed straight at Silicon Valley: what is Facebook actually for, and can a place built by a man who could not manage one friendship ever be a place where friendship happens? We take the movie as fiction rather than history, so this is not a fact check on how accurate The Social Network is. It is an argument about what the film says friendship costs. ============================= TIMESTAMPS ============================= 0:00 Were Mark and Eduardo Ever Actually Friends? 1:59 Aristotle's Three Friendships: Use, Pleasure, and Virtue 5:07 Mark and Eduardo Define "Friend" Differently 7:33 Erica, the Final Clubs, and Friendship as Leverage 12:11 Sean Parker and the Man Mark Wants to Become 15:06 If It Isn't About the Money, What Is It? 23:38 Frozen Accounts, Diluted Shares, and "You Signed the Papers" 30:39 Move Fast and Break Things: Progress Toward What? 33:21 What Is Facebook Actually For? 48:23 The One Real Friendship in the Movie ============================= FOLLOW US! =============================    / @socratescinema     / socratesatthecinema     / socratescinema     / socratescinema     / socratescinema   https://letterboxd.com/socrates_cinema https://paa.ge/socratesatthecinema ============================= PODCAST LINKS ============================= Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0340rmN... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id... #TheSocialNetwork #Aristotle #Friendship #filmanalysis ============================= YOUR HOSTS ============================= Trent Leach has been teaching philosophy for over twenty years. He begins every new year watching Joe Versus the Volcano. Nathaniel Boggs will have a biography when he supplies one to the editor. Socrates at the Cinema, where every episode we look at one great idea through one great film, by having great conversations about the films and questions that define our lives.