OPINION:
It is hard to say what is more comical in this grilling of Facebook hoodie-in-chief Mark Zuckerberg by members of Congress.
First, you have The Big Dork hissing and blistering like a screaming weenie over a Boy Scout campfire.
“Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company,” he sniveled in his opening remarks.
We are talking about a behemoth company that peddles personal information scraped from millions of “users” around the planet and has the power to promote people into the presidency — or make them vanish.
Yeah, “idealistic” and “optimistic” are the exact words that come to mind — in Newspeak maybe.
Then there are the Dearth Panels of lawmakers sitting in hot judgment of The Big Dork and his sinister game of bartering the personal information of millions of “users” in order to rig the information superhighway in favor of whoever is the highest bidder. (Unless, of course, the highest bidder happens to be conservative.)
All these politicians are shocked — SHOCKED! — to find personal information bartering going on around here!
Every single one of these people in Congress expressing shock and condemnation over Facebook’s sale of persuasion power to political entities already knew exactly what Facebook has been up to for years. Because each and every one of them has used those very tactics to get elected.
It wasn’t until Donald Trump stumbled upon the scene and used that system to get himself elected that everybody around here started going bonkers.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The Big Dork figured it all out. Kudos to him.
It is how Mr. Trump got elected, and it is how Barack Obama got elected.
As for privacy concerns, I am not sure what you can do about that. And I sure as hell don’t trust Congress to figure it out.
I think most people are smart enough to know that if you post on your Facebook page all about your insatiable passion for fluffy pink unicorns, then you are very likely to become a target of the fluffy pink unicorn industry.
One thing is for certain. If you suddenly ban Facebook from scraping and selling personal information, the company will cease to exist. After all, it is the heart of their business model and has been from Day One.
My real complaint about The Big Dork is his weasel claim that Facebook is an “idealistic” and “optimistic” company.
Shut up. You are not. Stop lying.
Specifically, he takes credit for organizing the so-called #metoo movement that exposed rampant degradation of women by powerful men in Hollywood, journalism and other bastions dominated by Democrats.
The frenzied movement exposed powerful men for leering, ogling, groping and generally objectifying women.
All of which is kind of funny when you think about how Facebook got started.
Like many virgins in college, The Big Dork sat around his dorm room at Harvard flipping through pictures of girls on campus with whom he could never score a simple date.
In an early version of Facebook, called FaceMash, The Big Dork placed two pictures of female students and placed them side by side. Playing a game of “hot or not,” users could pick which of the young women was better looking.
Writing in a blog entry during this time, The Big Dork said, “I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.”
Talk about #metoo.
Well, at least he wasn’t objectifying women. Or leering. Or ogling. Or bullying.
Lucky for him he made billions of dollars. Otherwise, The Big Dork would still be a virgin.
• Contact Charles Hurt at churt@washingtontimes.com; @charleshurt.
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