This is the best explanation I can come up with: Due to the nature of the market, there had to be one winner in that particular social networking space, and it turned out to be a completely mediocre choice. Facebook had superior competitors who lost because they didn't start at Harvard, and for literally no other reason.
Zuckerberg, to our generation, is emblematic of the successful mediocrity (not a contradiction)-- often the annoying, arrogant suckup who gets into good schools by doing a hundred extracurriculars not very well, the one who gets ahead by exploiting the system. This ties in well to the fact that the absolute only reason any of us have heard of Facebook (originally thefacebook... :vomit:) is that it started at Harvard and was able to use prestige at each level of market growth (first Harvard, then the Ivy League, then the top ~150 colleges...) to progress to the next. It makes him a symbol of the Elite College Mediocrity (ECM), an archetype that all of us hate. Those of us who went to top colleges will never forgive the ECMs for the damage they did to our college experience. Those who didn't go to top colleges despise ECMs because the ECMs have more competitive resumes and stronger rolodexes for no good reason.
Zuckerberg's not an ECM at all, actually, since he's quite bright compared to the average person and even the average student at Harvard. He is, however, an utter incompetent compared to level of success and prominence to which he has been lifted by the sheer dumb force of +5 sigma luck.
He also gave a talk at Startup School 2007 that was absolutely terrible. In fact, it was so awful as to raise suspicions of sabotage.
Zuckerberg, to our generation, is emblematic of the successful mediocrity (not a contradiction)-- often the annoying, arrogant suckup who gets into good schools by doing a hundred extracurriculars not very well, the one who gets ahead by exploiting the system. This ties in well to the fact that the absolute only reason any of us have heard of Facebook (originally thefacebook... :vomit:) is that it started at Harvard and was able to use prestige at each level of market growth (first Harvard, then the Ivy League, then the top ~150 colleges...) to progress to the next. It makes him a symbol of the Elite College Mediocrity (ECM), an archetype that all of us hate. Those of us who went to top colleges will never forgive the ECMs for the damage they did to our college experience. Those who didn't go to top colleges despise ECMs because the ECMs have more competitive resumes and stronger rolodexes for no good reason.
Zuckerberg's not an ECM at all, actually, since he's quite bright compared to the average person and even the average student at Harvard. He is, however, an utter incompetent compared to level of success and prominence to which he has been lifted by the sheer dumb force of +5 sigma luck.
He also gave a talk at Startup School 2007 that was absolutely terrible. In fact, it was so awful as to raise suspicions of sabotage.