He didn’t paint a particularly friendly picture of Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the movie The Social Network, and since he finished working on the film, he packed up his virtual bags and bid his online Facebook friends adieu.
That’s what Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin told the audience at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Tuesday during a panel discussion with David Simon, creator of HBO’s The Wire and Treme.
“I have a lot of opinions on social media that make me sound like a grumpy old man sitting on the porch yelling at kids,” Sorkin was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph.
Sorkin, 50, also called himself a Luddite, but other than that didn’t give a reason for abandoning the platform.
The Guardian notes that The Social Network’s star Jesse Eisenberg also left the network because he found it creepy.
Eisenberg said he quit after receiving a note from Facebook with suggestions about who he should befriend — after he’d joined with a fake name.
He said:
“One of them was a girl my sister was friends with in high school. I don’t know how they found her, no idea. I signed off right then.”
Zuckerberg probably won’t be too upset at the news. In May when German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked him about the film, he told her that he didn’t like it.
Sarah Lai Stirland
Sarah Lai Stirland is a reporter for TPM's Idea Lab. She's reported and written on the process of innovation, technology and politics for the past 15 years at a variety of publications. They include Red Herring, National Journal's Technology Daily, the Village Voice, Wired.com, POLITICO and others. She can be reached at: sarah@talkingpointsmemo.com.