Zuckerberg's Neck (No, really)

exchemist

Valued Senior Member
I was amused to read the following, almost surreal, piece in the Indie today, by Alan Rusbridger, quondam editor of the Guardian and now editor of Prospect magazine:
QUOTE
I have been worrying about my neck size. It’s 16 and a half since you ask, and I have a full collection of M&S shirts to prove it. But I’m not sure my neck is… OK, I’m going to say it, masculine enough. And, in this day and age, that’s not good.

What has provoked this bout of insecurity? A very long conversation between master of the universe Mark Zuckerberg and famed podcast host Joe Rogan – all two hours 50 minutes and 36 seconds of it. There are shorter Wagner operas.

I have been gradually absorbing the dialogue between the two men. As with Montaigne’s essays, it is sometimes best to consume a little, often.

About an hour and four minutes in, the two men start discussing Mark’s neck. “You look like a jiu-jitsu guy,” says Joe, commending Mike Tyson’s neck for being bigger than his face. Mike’s neck was 20 inches, which, on reflection, is fine because M&S goes up to 21 inches.

Mark agrees. “I’m going to be running [Meta] for a while,” he says, “and the number one thing you need to do in addition to having great partners is have a strong neck. So I take that pretty seriously.”

Now, Mark is one of the most successful and richest people on the planet, so it is as well to listen carefully to his advice.

Joe asked Mark if he had been “using iron neck”. I had to google “neck iron” – sorry, Iron Neck, which turns out to be a contraption for building a neck like Mark’s, even if he doesn’t use one himself. Amazon Prime has promised it by tomorrow.

But that’s just the start, because all that jiu-jitsu has made Mark think about masculine energy in general. I will try to do justice to his line of argument. Masculine energy is good. Corporate culture was trying to get away from it. You want women to succeed, of course you do. But now, in the second age of Trump, maybe it is time for an adjustment.

“I think having a culture that like celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive um and that’s that has been that has been a kind of a positive experience for me just like having a thing that I can just like do with my guy friends and, like, yeah, and it’s just like we just like beat each other a bit.”

(Thus reads the transcript accompanying the YouTube video of the conversation.)

“I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung towards being this somewhat more neutered thing and I didn’t really feel that until I got involved in martial arts … and I just kind of realised it’s like, oh this that’s how you become successful at martial arts, you have to be at least somewhat aggressive, yeah.”

What Mark is saying is that the pendulum has swung too far and it’s time for blokes to be able to talk about whether Arsenal need a new striker PDQ first thing in the morning without feeling they’re about to be reported by the diversity, equality and inclusion team. Which, in Meta’s case, Mark has just fired.

This, he insists, is the real Mark. He really does want to crush the people he’s competing with. And who is to say that’s wrong?

But the jiu-jitsu segment was just the start for Joe and Mark as they warmed to their theme, because what really unlocked it for Mark was hunting. He has a ranch in Hawaii, where there are apparently far too many pigs.

The answer is to kill them, and Mark agrees with Joe that this is more primal and tangible (and therefore less emasculating) “than um, you know … sitting in product reviews or something for some, like, piece of software that we’re writing”.

This leads into a discussion about whether it is better to shoot the pigs or use a bow and arrow. The latter is Mark’s preferred method, though he concedes that a rifle is more efficient and “your conversion rate is so much higher.” There followed a long discussion about types of bow and the ideal distance to shoot a pig. Mark’s maximum kill with an arrow is from 50 yards, whereas Joe has managed 79.

This was invigorating stuff, and I walked into the Prospect office the following morning to announce that we needed to up the masculine energy a bit. I was met with looks that ranged from pitying to solicitous, which tells you all you need to know. Neutered! Way to go.

The thing is, I remember what it was like to work in a masculine office, even if this was before the age when we had to worry about neck sizes. There was, indeed, a bit of old-fashioned testosterone in the air at the morning editorial conference. You stood to drink your pints round at the Coach and Horses of an evening: sitting down was for wokies, not that we had a label then. Only very occasionally would there be actual fistfights, but then this was The Guardian.

My young Prospect colleagues have much to learn. But, now we are entering the second age of Trump, there is no time to lose. Apparently, there was somewhere in the Scottish Borders where they had driven pigs for corporate away days, but some of the porkers walked towards the guns expecting to be fed. This is not what we need. We may need an editorial team-building exercise in Hawaii.

The Mark and Joe love-in coincided with the Financial Times inviting another master of the universe, Peter Thiel, to write an op-ed column. How best to summarise it: for much of the past 600 years since the age of Gutenberg, there has been something called a Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC), which kept us from knowing important things such as who killed JFK and whether Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, worked for the Deep State and/or Xi Jinping.

Thankfully, the internet came along and liberated us from the control of the DISC (aka the media, bureaucracies, universities and government-funded NGOs) and we can now relish the new reality, which includes the apparent knowledge that 65 per cent of Americans doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

Once upon a time, there were things called facts, or at least fact-checkers. But first Elon, and then Mark, decided that fact-checking was woke. And so now we have community notes – and who is to say that the 65 per cent is wrong?

We’re on our own. Which is fine by me. I’m going to start with Iron Neck, launch compulsory jiu-jitsu classes and generally rebuild a more virile office culture. Stand by for Prospect on steroids. First guest editor: Peter Thiel. The guy talks a lot of sense. Buckle up, lads. It’s gonna be wild.


UNQUOTE

So Zuckerberg, possibly the nerdiest nerd on the planet, is now trying to get all macho and aggressive. Perhaps he is trying to recapture the original spirit of Facebook, which I understand started as an undergraduate site for rating the fuckability of female students.

Why is it I tend to feel people like Zuckerberg, Musk et al are all a bit, well, incel? At any rate they give me the creeps.
 
My mind flashes on the Zuckerberg character, in the concluding shot of The Social Network - making a friend request then sitting there hitting refresh over and over.
 
My neck size is 14 and I have a single dress shirt to prove it. At 6'1", I am quite plainly not masculine ("enough") and am rather freakishly gaunt and I couldn't care less.

And, yeah, besides being awful in pretty much every respect, these people are seriously creepy.
 
My neck size is 14 and I have a single dress shirt to prove it. At 6'1", I am quite plainly not masculine ("enough") and am rather freakishly gaunt and I couldn't care less.

And, yeah, besides being awful in pretty much every respect, these people are seriously creepy.
Necktilian?
 
My neck got bigger when I started working out over 40 years ago. No idea what the measurement is now.
I didn't realise this was a thing, I guess size really does matter.
 
My mind flashes on the Zuckerberg character, in the concluding shot of The Social Network - making a friend request then sitting there hitting refresh over and over.
These incel types are all coming out of the woodwork now that Trump has been re-elected. Even that sex-trafficking creep Andrew Tate has announced he's starting a political party. It's called BRUV, an acronym for British Restoration of Underlying Values, though my son thinks it ought to stand for Britons Raping Underage Vaginas. Getting crowded now on the UK extreme right scene with the Tory party trying to outdo Farage's Reform vehicle, Laurence Fox's ridiculous, misogynistic Reclaim party and now, even more preposterously, "BRUV".

Meanwhile, US corporations are falling over themselves to scrap their diversity programmes and their CO2 emission targets. What a display of craven, amoral insincerity.
 
My neck size is 14 and I have a single dress shirt to prove it. At 6'1", I am quite plainly not masculine ("enough") and am rather freakishly gaunt and I couldn't care less.

And, yeah, besides being awful in pretty much every respect, these people are seriously creepy.
In some ways the really creepy thing in that piece is the reference to the article in the FT by Peter Thiel. This is a priceless piece of self-serving cod-philosophy, dressed up with ancient Greek words to make it seem intellectually respectable: https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105

He talks, delusionally, of an "ancien regime", to be overthrown by the apokálypsis of the brave new Trumpy era. This "ancien regime" he says, keeps secrets from the people by means of a sort of tacit establishment conspiracy called the DISC (Distributed Idea Suppression Complex). This DISC, he says, comprises all the media organisations, universities, bureaucracies and government-funded NGOs. In other words, he means all those organisations and people with actual expertise in the subject matter of issues of public interest.

He says there has been a war between the DISC and the internet and the internet has won. He takes as an example all the conspiracy theories dreamt up by the US Right about the covid pandemic, claiming the freedom of the internet will allow the truth to emerge despite the efforts of the DISC to suppress it. (Fauci features as a hate object here, naturally.) He also references the conspiracy theories about who killed JFK, saying 65% of Americans don't believe Oswald acted alone, as if this in itself is evidence that others were involved.

At this rate, Magical Realist must be right about alien invasions: after all, plenty of people believe in that, so who is to say it is untrue?

This is basically an attack on the validity of expertise and on truth itself, led by Thiel's tech bro mates, a tiny handful of whom control most of the internet social media. (He may actually be aware of the damage this will cause to US society. After all, he has his own personal bunker, safely in New Zealand, on the other side of the world, if it all goes tits up.)

It's a nakedly silly article, trying to dress up Trump as a visionary leading the way to some brave new world in which The Truth will all finally come out. With billionaires like Elon Musk promoting proven falsehoods across the globe to try to bring down European governments, what could possibly be wrong with this picture?
 
Kinda funny.

But this passage puts the lie to it and knocks all the wind out of it:
Mark is one of the most successful and richest people on the planet, so it is as well to listen carefully to his advice.

Taylor Swift is one of the richest people on the planet too - but I would not listen carefully to her advice on cis-lunar orbital insertion parameters.
 
Kinda funny.

But this passage puts the lie to it and knocks all the wind out of it:


Taylor Swift is one of the richest people on the planet too - but I would not listen carefully to her advice on cis-lunar orbital insertion parameters.
Oh I thought that was one of the funneir lines. The notion that, because Zuckerberg is successful, one should heed what he has to say about the importance of a thick neck, is rather amusing. Just shows how up-their-own-arses these rich guys have become. :biggrin:

(Taylor Swift, by the way, seems to be a very normal, nice, girl next door type, in spite of her stupendous wealth, fame and beauty. She wouldn't dream of pontificating about orbital insertion, I am quite sure. :) )
 
Oh I thought that was one of the funneir lines. The notion that, because Zuckerberg is successful, one should heed what he has to say about the importance of a thick neck, is rather amusing. Just shows how up-their-own-arses these rich guys have become. :biggrin:
Exactly.

Although I don't blame him; if he has fans that hang on his every word that's their own doing. If he goes on a radio show and gets millions of listeners who is he to turn his back on them?
(Taylor Swift, by the way, seems to be a very normal, nice, girl next door type, in spite of her stupendous wealth, fame and beauty. She wouldn't dream of pontificating about orbital insertion, I am quite sure. :) )
Indeed. Couldn't pick a tune of hers out of a hat, but I am impressed with her authenticity. She donates millions to every city she visits.
 
Exactly.

Although I don't blame him; if he has fans that hang on his every word that's their own doing. If he goes on a radio show and gets millions of listeners who is he to turn his back on them?

Indeed. Couldn't pick a tune of hers out of a hat, but I am impressed with her authenticity. She donates millions to every city she visits.
Rusbridger, in case you don't know, is a 71yr old, traditional, bespectacled, left of centre newspaper editor, and former principal of an Oxford college. So it's actually bloody funny to imagine him, of all people, investing in something from Amazon called "Iron Neck", to build up his neck so to be more effective - in his current job as editor of the highly intellectual Prospect magazine.:biggrin:

Re Taylor Swift, I have to admit to warming to her rather, something I never do with pop stars as a rule. She seems very genuine, in spite of being a steely-eyed businesswoman. (I once went out with a refinery technologist who looked a tiny bit like her, back in the 1980s, which may have something to do with it.:cool:

1737242046453.png
)
 
Although I don't blame him; if he has fans that hang on his every word that's their own doing. If he goes on a radio show and gets millions of listeners who is he to turn his back on them?
But isn't this what people are doing with Musk, for example? Or even Trump? To use your words: "I don't blame him ... Who is he to turn his back on them [his millions of listeners/followers]".
The issue here seems to be not whether people follow or not, but of the intention of the person providing the advice, and the authority that they claim solely due to their perceived position.

I've long since stopped caring what mere celebrities have had to say on issues where their view is no better informed than that of any stranger I care to stop in the street and ask. If I want an opinion that is ultimately of little importance to me, why would I care what a celebrity says when I can get the same from this site? ;)



Taylor Swift... a music industry phenom while her actual music is... eminently forgettable. But then I'm not exactly her target audience, as I grew up when there was proper music to listen to. ;)
 
My neck got bigger when I started working out over 40 years ago. No idea what the measurement is now.
I didn't realise this was a thing, I guess size really does matter.

My neck size stays between me and my mortician. I don't recall it ever being an issue with women. Likely another physical dimension that only men actually care about while they imagine that women do. The only effect I ever noticed from workouts was that there's a Pilates sort of thing called "dead bug" which did seem to broaden my neck a bit. (it keeps you supporting your head with neck muscles in much the same uncomfortable way as a plumbing project where you work under the sink)
 
(I once went out with a refinery technologist who looked a tiny bit like her, back in the 1980s, which may have something to do with it)
Lovely pic. She seems very...refined. I myself once dated, in college, a girl who resembled the Swift. It was rather brief. After some flirting, I came over and helped her paint her apartment (that is not a euphemism, I hasten to add), then we started necking (or snogging, as they say in your sceptered isle), and then she got upset and informed me that her boyfriend would not be pleased by this sort of thing. I said something funny to defuse the situation while trying to figure out if she had mentioned said boyfriend before and I had just missed it. In any case, I was too young and clueless to handle such complexity, so we parted on friendly terms. In retrospect, the whole debacle could have been partly due to paint fumes.
 
This whole neck thing reminds me of Churchill's "some chicken ,some neck" quote as he refuted French generals' assessment of the likely state of England's neck after 3 weeks of war with Germany(addressing the Canadian Parliament on December 30 1941)

 
Lovely pic. She seems very...refined. I myself once dated, in college, a girl who resembled the Swift. It was rather brief. After some flirting, I came over and helped her paint her apartment (that is not a euphemism, I hasten to add), then we started necking (or snogging, as they say in your sceptered isle), and then she got upset and informed me that her boyfriend would not be pleased by this sort of thing. I said something funny to defuse the situation while trying to figure out if she had mentioned said boyfriend before and I had just missed it. In any case, I was too young and clueless to handle such complexity, so we parted on friendly terms. In retrospect, the whole debacle could have been partly due to paint fumes.
Ha. Yes maybe paint fumes, or just the effect of doing something physical together in close proximity. And you were inadvertently displaying your qualities as a reliable domestic man, which ticks an important box for many women. The boyfriend, I note, had not offered to help with this drudgery.

This refinery technologist was a woman of varied talents, from changing a clutch bearing on her car by herself , shooting with a .22 rifle, playing the flute, and being the only person I ever met who could actually do the Rubik's Cube. She used to come round to my house, fiddle with the cube for about half an hour, get all the colours sorted and smile sweetly - and faintly annoyingly.

Memories........but we digress......
 
Back
Top