The Mark Zuckerberg Hoax
March 11th, 2008 by Chantelle Oliver | 8 Comments »
Ashton Kutcher’s new reality show, Pop Fiction, is sending ripples through the celebrity media machine. The show is basically Punk’d, but the victims: they’re the paparazzi. In the first episode Paris Hilton worked the Los Angeles stroll with a “shaman” and proclaimed her salvation through him and and demonstrated it by giving away a diamond necklace to an overjoyed onlooker. The story spread from Perez Hilton to the print rags. A few days later the entertainment reporters hung their heads low when Paris revealed the prank.
At SXSW Interactive Festival this week Sarah Lacy’s interview with A-list cewebrity Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg—currently being reported as a fiasco—is a similar kind of hoax.
Follow me:
According to the gossip pages, Lacy’s interview “style” was peppered with “irrelevant, personal stories” and thus caused a revolt. Zuckerberg and his audience shamed her and backed her into a corner with brash laughter and taunting. She left the interview stunned and asking everyone to email and tell her just what it was that went wrong. She was, of course, bewildered.
And rightly so: She had been punk’d by the newest would-be reality show: Cewebrity Priapus. Zuckerberg played the part of Paris Hilton and the audience was his shaman. Like Ashton poking fun at the paparazzi, Cewebrity’s producers are poking fun at the idea a woman journalist ought dare to question a cewebrity. Spurred into action by the recent reports of the feminization of the Internet the show actively defends the genitalia of founding fathers of social networking and their lemming sons.
My email to Sarah Lacy would read, if you were a fence post, Sarah, consider yourself pissed upon.
I consider myself, a female cewebritard analyst and social network aficionado, warned.
Lame.
My sentiments exactly. Sexism is _lame_. Well, not in the literal sense unfortunately.
In Sarah Lacy’s own words, “W. T. F?” Did you even watch the interview? It was the most unprofessional train wreck I have ever seen. Just read a transcript.
The only sexist in this whole story is you. If you can’t see past Sarah and Mark’s genders to get to the real story, which is burningly obvious, then why is the Walrus letting you damage its brand?
Wow. Now I’ve been pissed on too.
Thank-you for illustrating my point nicely. I promise I didn’t make up your post to demonstrate the gendered borders of of the tech world and how anyone violating the code by mocking this power structure gets warned.
Do you even read my blog?
Try reading Let’s Get Low Low Low for a primer on what sexism IS.
Sexism is about power. It is impossible for reverse sexism to exist. To be clear, there is never sexism against men.
Gender is only something to see past because it serves you, don’t you see that honey?
Further, even mainstream (read manly) tech pages have an entirely different take than you. Techcrunch called the entire coverage a “witch burning”:
What in the world drove these “journalists� to write this nonsense? Jealously over the fact that they weren’t on stage, or over Lacy’s new book? Perhaps they just got caught up in the fun of a witch burning. But whatever drove them to write those articles, it certainly wasn’t journalism. Nor was it professional. And, worst of all, it wasn’t accurate.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/10/the-nuclear-disaster-at-sxsw-was-nothing-more-than-a-witch-burning/
keep sticking it to the man chantelle!
[...] The reporters ‘hung their heads low when Paris revealed the prank’, according to a blog post by reporTwitters’ newest member Chantelle Oliver (welcome [...]
Chantelle, you missed the point and failed to make a point.
Sarah Lacy is a horrible journalist who attempts to flirt with her interview subjects. Call it reverse sexism, working with what she has to even the playing field, or whatever you want, but there was nto organized hoax to shame Sarah Lacy.
She just came unprepared, dropped the ball, tried to make too much of the interview about herself, and expected Mark to finish her sentences for her. For you to call that sexism means you’re grasping at straws. I don’t think Lacy is a harlot, bimbo, or anything else. I just think she’s unprofessional and extremely self-centered. Hers is not a new style of journalism. It is trite and desperate self-promotion.
And it doesn’t go over well with audiences.
Just a quick note Jake – yours is a common failure. Reducing sexism to an individual and non systemic problem is useful to you, as a non-woman.
As a woman in tech I am annoyed but I understand why women in tech use their appearance/flirting etc in their work, as you accuse Sarah Lacy. These accusations may or may not be true but they are certainly and undoubtably not surprising.
Have some humility and step into her shoes. The only advantage a woman has in tech over men is her sex appeal. Access to the men’s tech club is closed. A woman’s skill has little to do with it because it is a culture for, about and reproduced by men. One of the quickest and easiest ways to get superficial access is to use sexuality. A woman tech blogger can toil away writing about issues that concern her (for example sexism, racism and ethnocentrism in tech) and be entirely ignored because these are not white Western men’s issues but rather the roots of their privilege – something they would rather not look too closely at.
So your comment is sadly predictable and lacks the introspection and humility I dream of that would signal an actual shift in power.