Panic World - Does Mark Zuckerberg Care Anymore? (How Is This Better?)

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Hi, everyone! We're out this week, but we wanted to share an episode of How Is This Better? featuring our very own, Ryan Broderick. The episode covers the evolution of everyone's favorite: Mark Zuckerberg. We'll be back next week with an all new Panic World, but for now – make sure you follow/subscribe to How Is This Better? wherever you get your podcasts!Subscribe to How Is This Better? on: YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, we're off this week. But don't worry, if you really want to hear me rant and rave about the internet, you can still do that. Up next is an episode from the Fantastic Show, How Is This Better, starring Akely Hughes. And I am a guest on that episode. So yeah, there you go. Don't worry.

The election misinformation that really proliferated 2020, Cambridge Analytica, that huge scandal. There's hate speech and radicalizing people. There's obviously the Instagram and teenage girls' body image issues of it all. And then there's, of course, Myanmar. Facebook has a hand and I think all of this. And obviously it can't be reduced to one person's impact. But do you think he gives a shit?

Yeah, it's quite a list. And it's not even the half of it. We live in a timeline where, for some reason, we have to know and care about the people who make the products we use every day. I was content to not know, feeling it's none of my business. I just use it, you know? I don't know who invented the refrigerator, for example. Doesn't mean I don't appreciate it.

But as stated, now we know. We are intimately familiar with these men, and unfortunately, a lot of these captain of industry types are giving, at best, awkward, loner nerds, and at worst, megalomaniacal incels. Somewhere in that Venn diagram lies Mark Zuckerberg, the millennial that holds half of the total wealth of the generation. and who seemingly gave up on his overstated mission of making the world a better place

sometime around 2015. He traded his engineer hoodie for a tall tea and a chain, no comment, and is content to appropriate every original app you love until the internet is nothing but his personal property, all from the comfort of his doomsday bunker. You do have a bunker there. Is there something you know that we don't? No, I think that's just like a little shelter under... A little shelter.

What are you worried about? Sure, Mark. I'm Akila Hughes, and today I'm investigating the evolution of Mark Zuckerberg and the increasingly digitally connected but socially isolated society. He's had an oversized hand in shaping. And to both, asking the question I always ask, how is this better? When you hear the name Mark Zuckerberg, what comes to mind? I think about a rumor that I heard recently that he only eats chicken nuggets.

That's the current picture of him in my head. I hear that he has, like, a personal chef makes artisanal chicken nuggets for him, which I feel like sums it all up quite well. This is Ryan Broderick, hosts of the Panic World podcast, creator and writer behind the Garbage Day newsletter, and prolific internet poster. If anybody can synthesize how Zuckerberg was perceived by the public, it's him. Right. Doesn't it seem like he's sort of like a man baby, but rich? Yeah, he's definitely stunted. I mean, I once read like a list of like the most influential millennials, and this was a couple years ago, and it was like, Mark Zuckerberg, MBS in Saudi Arabia, like Stephen Miller.

And I was like, oh, damn. Like, we are bad. Yeah, we're down bad. Damn. We're really bad. But if we're talking about like Mark Zuckerberg as a person, I think there's obviously the Mark Zuckerberg from the social network movie, the kind of like Harvard Mark Zuckerberg. And then there's the like Obama era ice bucket challenge Mark Zuckerberg who's like,

looks like he's in an okay go music video, like that kind of guy. Right. He was peak millennial in that time. And then there's like congressional. hearing late stage Trump era, Mark Zuckerberg. And now we have like Muay Thai fighter, super bro, artisan chicken nuggets man, Mark Zuckerberg wearing like a Gen Z chain on a big shirt, like that kind of thing. Yes. Now that Ryan's laid out the different eras, let's look a little more closely at the evolution of his personal mission. Going public is an important milestone

in our history. But here's the thing. Our mission isn't to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. That evolution after the break. It sort of came in my radar, maybe a little over a year into it, as something the college kids used. And I met Mark in early 2006. This is Stephen Levy, journalist and author of Facebook The Inside Story. Facebook was about two years old.

It was a kind of an awkward meeting. He could hardly answer my questions when I started asking of it. But a year later, I think, is when you really felt that Facebook was going to break through. I think the moment was when they decided to build a platform. People don't remember much about this, but they thought that Facebook would be a platform that people would write applications for, like you do with the iPhone. They launched it and it had a lot of second order effects. Right now, people don't really use Facebook for that.

But back then, you could see the ambitions and how this was going to be really important. I was working at Newsweek at the time, and we thought, wow, we really should do a cover story about this company, which is breaking through. Other people have the same idea. They were kind of deluge and they tried to say no. We thought, whoa, you don't want the cover of Newsweek? Back then, actually Newsweek meant something. Publishing, generally.

But we decided we do it anyway, and he blinked at the last minute and cooperated. So we did a cover story on Facebook at Newsweek. course, I kept up with it since then, and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. In those early days, though, not everyone was sold on Facebook. I was resistant. No, I wasn't resistant to it. I was curious about it. And I actually want to set the stage here with like this incredible study that I try to plug

every time I talk about this era because I think it's like very important for understanding like why Facebook won in Myspace didn't. So your listeners can kind of like Google this. I'm not going to try to like get the title right, but it's really good. I believe the title is digital ghetto. I think that's actually what it's called. And it was describing the sort of reason for Facebook taking off. And it argues that because it locked its user base behind college email addresses, it created

one of the first instances of like class dynamics playing out online. The study Ryan mentioned comes from a chapter of a book called Digital Race Anthology. It explores how during the mid-2000s, American teenagers' choices between Myspace and Facebook were influenced by race. class dynamics. So you very quickly got this feeling of like, oh, well, like the non-college educated or the maybe the working class or poor people, they're on Myspace, right? And then you have like the Harvard Kids first, then you have the Ivy League second, then you have college kids third on Facebook. So by the time that I joined Facebook in 2006, probably, 2007, they had

just opened it up beyond college kids. And so very quickly to me, and I was a Myspace party, because you can see my haircut now, obviously. Yeah, save. I'm always going to be an emo kid in 2005. I remember sort of the junkification of MySpace happening very quickly where all of a sudden it was just like juggalo's and like your town's weed dealer on MySpace and it was like everyone else was moving to Facebook.

Yes. And that for me was around 2006, 2007. So with Facebook, the newly released, newly gentrified Myspace.com clone, Zuckerberg continued his ascent in the public consciousness. Mark was absolutely revered as Facebook grew to a billion users and revolutionize the way people connect online. A few Obama years pass, and Facebook's popularity has exploded. This is a new era in the mark the world should be better thanks to my contribution Zuckerberg's evolution. By 2010, we have Aaron Sorkin making an Oscar

movie about the guy, and to this day, we have tech bros and reporters glazing him, talking endlessly about his genius, when in reality, what they seem to admire is his wealth. A lot of like to believe that if they were smarter, they'd also be as rich as Mark Zuckerberg. But that's not how intelligence or money works. I'm going to hold your hand when I say this. You're never going to be as rich as Mark Zuckerberg. But then something changed. With the rise of Trump and general fascism came the indignation of a man who was no longer

the progressive golden child, but rather a middle-aged man trying to remain relevant by purchasing or copying all the newer, younger, better apps. There was also the scandal that helped lead. to that rise, Cambridge Analytica, which forced Duck to testify before Congress and led to his short-lived crusade against misinformation on his dying platform. The pedestal he'd been given as the millennial Wunderkind using tech to welcome the future was imploding beneath him. In short, Mark was in his flop era, despised by the left and right through Donald Trump's first term. Fast forward to 2020, and the madness of the pandemic and presidential election in the states has caused

mass delusion. And tech moguls see an opportunity, famously. a big moment for Zoom. For Mark Zuckerberg, this manifests in throwing everything into the metaverse, something that maybe he saw as making the world a better place, but everyone else saw as a joke. I also play video games as a sidebar. And so, like, seeing Mark Zuckerberg sink, I mean, a billion, billions of dollars?

Who knows? Lots of money into the metaverse. When Fortnite already looks a billion times better. What was he thinking? Is it Yesman in the same way that Kanye has yes men? Is it the yes-men in the same way that Trump has yes-men where every idea is so great. You are such a genius. Yes. Do it. Change the name of your company even.

My understanding is no. Like they had Oculus labs or whatever running. They had that already. It seems like very much, if not a singular idea from him. Like it does seem like it was coming from him. And I mean, you could say that like those are yes man, but I don't think of it as the same way as like people whispering in Trump's year to get something done. This seems like something that like Zuckerberg was very fired. up about. And here's the tell that this seems like something that Zuckerberg was really interested in. I have two oculus is right here. I used them to review stuff years ago. They are covered in dust. I have not touched them in years. But I was reviewing one of the oculus is for a story in like, let's say 20, 21 or 22, like lockdowns are still kind of happening. Yeah, my girlfriend at the

time and I are up. I'm at home, Massachusetts with my family. And I was like, oh, I got to review this thing. You want to play Beat Sabre. And so I had my parents over. and we played Beat Saber. And it was actually really fun. Beat Saber Rips. It's great. Yeah. But this is how I know this is like a Zuckerberg idea. There is no way to share a communal experience of playing Beat Saber.

Right. You had to come up with like this janky-ass system where I'd plug an iPad into the TV and then wirelessly. Yeah. And it's on a delay. So you can't even hear the music because the music delay outside is screwing up the music in your ears. There's no in-person way to share this very fun communal activity simply at home. And that to me screams Mark Zuckerberg because there's no way he even thought that that would happen. Right. He was like, who else would see it? Beat Sabre is so fun.

Imagine a genuine like party game version of Beat Sabre through Oculus that could just like go through the computer somehow or the TV or whatever. No. And that to me just screams Mark Zuckerberg. Right. Because it's also like we're all at home and no one's innovating like the like the couch gaming experience where we're like, they're like, no, no, no, because you would just talk to your friends who aren't in your house. I'm like, but what do you have a family? He's like, oh, He doesn't talk to his kids. Anyway. What? All of the family members are going to sit with their headsets on and talk to each other in Metaverse? Are you out of your mind? That is the most sad, dystopian, dark thing I could imagine.

Like, and for him, he's not even thinking about it. Yes. And that's the thing. It's like, that's what makes it out of touch, I think. He is isolated. And so he is creating for an isolated society. And I think that, like, he's solving a problem that I think he is also the force behind in a lot of ways. Yes. If we all lost Wi-Fi connection for like, I don't know if you saw relatively recently. I think it was in like Portugal and a few other countries.

There was just like, the power went down. And so there's all of these just images of people playing cards in the park and like talking to people. And like, they have like, you know, a wireless radio. And they're all just like, cool, we're vibing. We're out of time. I mean, obviously that society isn't going to come back, you know, in full. But like, clearly, you know, the fact that those images went viral on TikTok and everywhere else because the world was like, oh, yeah, We could touch grass.

Like, he's not innovating in the direction of grass. No, I mean, it's a threat to his business model. It's the same way that, like, Netflix will never allow theatrical releases because their business model is killing the human connection of a movie theater. But Facebook is that for everything. Yeah. Like, physical connection is a threat to Facebook, is a threat to meta. And if they can't figure out a way to insert themselves in between those interactions,

they don't want them to exist. You can't really even talk about these websites now without acknowledging that that is at minimum what they're trying to do, at minimum. A closer look at Mark Zuckerberg's final form after the break. At the same time, Zuckerberg was doubling down on this isolated vision. He was also going through a pretty visible midlife crisis. You may remember the sweet baby rays, that weird pick of him painted like a ghost floating above the ocean. This final era of Mark Zuckerberg feels pretty cursed. Vio Vaughn may have described it best when he said this to Zuckerberg.

Yeah, you seem like a guy who probably like watched a video of how to be a guy on YouTube or something, you know. It's unclear who he's even trying to appeal to anymore and very clear that whoever that is, it's not working. In the most recent evolution of Mark Zuckerberg, he's past it. He's not apologizing anymore. So he figured, you know, I went through that and you know what? It didn't do me any good. you know, people still pounded me. And, you know, the government still was on my case. I wasn't winning any friends. So why even do anything except what I really want to do? So now I think he's past that and just doesn't give any more hoots. Well, okay. So you're actually leading me to where my brain is just sort of trying to wrap around all of this.

It's so clear with the new curls and the gold chains and the, you know, hanging out with the Jake Pauls and Joe Rogans of the world that obviously Mark Zuckerberg has gone through a major political evolution. And part of it is sort of this grievance that he was under the microscope and his company was under the microscope for its impact. Do you think that it really is just the fact that he was being, you know, his company was being probed and he had been questioned so many times and this is sort of a reactionary moment we're seeing from him? You know, what led to this?

You know, it's a big topic of discussion, you know, even among people who knew him fairly well. How much of this is him just being the way he always was or how much is somewhat of an evolution? Is it something for his business? I don't think it's necessarily for his business. I think this is who he wants to be. He's being who he wants to be. But it's different than he was before. I think there is somewhat of a political evolution. Some of it you could maybe chalk up to you know, being middle-aged and, you know. Sometimes that has to. You know, sometimes that has a weird effect on men, seems to be happily married with a family. So he's not going totally middle age crazy. But, you know, if a person starts spending a lot of time working out and getting

into MMA fighting and political views, starts talking as he's done about, you know, maybe this company, you know, is masculine enough, right? I never heard him talk about that when I was interviewing him a lot for my book in 2016 and 2020. Right. It is a little different, but I think it is clear that he's comfortable being that way. This is the way he wants to be. And if you don't like it, that's tough. And if the misogyny, misinformation, and general bad vibes of the graveyard that is now

meta haven't put you off, there's now plenty of AI slop to turn your stomach too. It's going poorly. So Zuckerberg launches threads. No one likes it there because it's, the people that we're supposed to be looking at now trying to talk. We don't care what they have to say. Facebook is mostly just reposted TikToks or reels that are, you know, old TikToks. It's about a month on delay from like actual zeitgeist.

And it's a lot of AI sloaf. We're in the sloppinization of the internet. You know, it's a lot of Jesus at the bottom of the ocean with shrimps blessing them and baptizing them or something. A lot of shrimp Jesus. Yeah, a lot of that. So what's left of the internet that we actually grew up with? Like what I would call the golden era.

Oh, I don't know. Nothing. Probably. I don't think that's coming back. I think it's time to sort of accept it. Blue sky will always be a niche product. And I wouldn't say it's because of like Facebook. It's just that like Facebook is part of a larger trend towards people not knowing how to read anymore.

Yeah. And like we just sort of have to accept that that's happening. In terms of AI slop, though, like we can see where Facebook is headed. I was working on a thing about this today. Meta has released meta. data. AI, which is a social feed of only AI content. You can look at it by going to meta. com.A.I. And it is just a giant stream of people talking to meta's AI. And it doesn't appear that people understand that this is public, but it is. Oh, no. What are people saying? What's the

worst? So a lot of it's just like garbage, like just total garbage. But I found some like really wild stuff on there. I found this one, it's a guy, it sounded like middle age guy. And he's taught, You can talk to the AI and the AI talks back and then it transcribes it. You can listen and read and then people can comment and share it and stuff. So one guy was like, hey, I just got out of prison after 30 years. I got a job at a nonprofit and they just give me a promotion and I'm really nervous. I want to know like what I should do. And like I got kind of emotional.

And then I found like another person being like, hey, I'm trying to figure out how to sign myself up as a caretaker for my mom through her health insurance. She's elderly. And then I've seen people be like, my dog is scared of fireworks and 40th July is coming up. Like, what can I do? It was a fascinating morning. reading through all this stuff. Do you believe it's real people or do you think those are ones

that they're feeding in there to make it look a little bit less insane? Well, so I will say the guy who's in prison, he deleted the post because I think you realized it was public. So by the time I was done writing about it was gone, but you can go and you can look at like people's profiles. The engagement's like really small. So I don't think like this is very popular. Right. But it's definitely part of Facebook's idea to like jettison social content and replace it with purely AI content because it goes back to the thing. I was talking about earlier where it's like, you know, you have this massive global network of people who might not be able to afford Photoshop or Adobe Premiere, but now they're expected to post

on the same level as influencers. So it's like, what if you give them all the same kind of starting point? Yeah. Once again, I just like come back to the humanness of it where it's like, okay, you've made this massive, massive network. Facebook is the largest human institution in the world surpassing the Catholic Church. Jesus. Like making Mark Zuckerberg effectively the Pope. Yeah, he's hoping. Yeah, I just look at this and I think like there has to be a better, more thoughtful way from managing this many people because like people deserve something better than this. It's 2025 and the Mark Zuckerberg we're getting now is not great. He's part of a class of billionaires who basically provide very little to society while expecting great thanks.

And he's one who seems happy to bow down to power instead of positively wielding his own. Tech moguls who were there sitting there on a platform inauguration. They weren't there with an equal amount of enthusiasm. Tim Cook, I don't think was happy to be there. Yeah, he definitely had the vibe of somebody with like a gun to his back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think he's a Trump fan. Sundar Pichai, I don't think that was an enthusiastic participation.

Mark Zuckerberg, I think he's vibing on Trump. I think it's a good time to remind everyone of the question that's always at hand. How is this better? Clearly, Zuck has plenty to gain by cozying up to Trump, whether it's hoping Trump will call off the dogs at the FTC for the antitrust suit, they filed in Trump's first administration, or if it just fits with his new persona that, as Stephen Levy said, seems to be the version of himself that he likes, maybe both. In any case, how is it better for the rest of us? So when Mark Zuckerberg started all of this, and when he started being interviewed about it, I guess, he was really quoted a lot talking about making the world a better place. And it goes back to his sort of idea of human connection and, you know, this is a place for friends. I guess that was like MySpace.

Sure, yeah. But, you know, whatever their cribbed version of that tagline was. And he still talks about his technology connecting people. But do you think he cares about making the world a better place at all anymore? I don't know, man. If you say something over and over again for 15 years, like you have to believe it, right? Like, in some sense, I don't think he's like this evil mastermind. I know people who have dealt with him and they don't, like, I've never heard that.

I think he is just kind of dumb. Yeah. Socially inept. Socially inept. Like, I think he just really believes that if you offer people a compelling enough replacement for what they need, they'll thank you. And I think he's just really naive. This is like a crazy thing to say, but he believes that human connection is a net positive. But anyone who's ever known any of my history can tell you that like that's not really how it works.

Not usually the case. Right. It's not, yeah, more communication doesn't seem to be better. Not always. And Steve Levy on this question of whether Zuck abandoned any greater good ambitions along the way, he pointed to something specific that suggests maybe. I'd ask him about, I haven't, you know, I've talked to him in a while, would be, what happened to your passion about the status of immigrants in the country?

That was, I believe, a genuine passion of his that people coming to this country should get a fair shake. He started an organization to help people like that. You know, he champion dreamers. So he is allied with a person who's the total opposite of that. How do you square that? Exactly. And I think that it's these sorts of hypocrisies that make him really fascinating. But it also, as a millennial, gives me pause about the future that maybe he is going to have a larger hand.

and designing than the rest of us. Seeing the trajectory of Mark Zuckerberg from upstart Wunderkin revolutionizing the way we use our phones and connect with other people online, to having a hand in genocides and election meddling, to now creating a dumpster of AI garbage in the visual shorthand of the nebish good guy to douchey misogynist pipeline, it is my firm belief that Mark Zuckerberg has no interest in making the world a better place. His impact is no doubt impressive.

But his intentions no longer have anything to do with greater good. They seem to be manifestations of problems he hasn't dealt with in himself. Grave insecurity, desperation to be loved, and avoid where a sense of purpose actually should be. It's no wonder Facebook has been reduced to a boomer fight club clawing to be in our top eight. If you know, you know. And what that means for our future and for the future of the young men who still look up to him, the jury is still out. But my guess is it's not better. How Is This Better is written and hosted by me, Akela Hughes. It is produced by Devin Moroni and edited by Shane Verkus.

Kevin Dreyfis is the managing director and executive producer at Courier. R.C. DeMezzo is VP of Brand and Social. And Charlotte Robertson is Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Tracy Kaplan is VP of Distribution and Sales. If you want to reach out about sponsoring or advertising, reach out to info at courier newsroom.com. Mary Ann Couga is director of marketing, and the original music is by used people and artwork by Danielle de Plato.