We imagine Mark Zuckerberg spends all day poking around in our personal business and laughing at our misfortunes, so we’re relishing the opportunity to return the favor.
As you may have heard, Zuckerberg’s company — a plucky little startup called Facebook — is not having the best year.
First, there was Zuck’s testimony before Congress, which was only amusing if you watched it on mute and pretended it was an episode of Black Mirror where a robot gets put on trial for murder.
Shortly thereafter, Zuckerberg was harshly criticized for defending the rights of Holocaust deniers who use his service to propagate their batsh-t beliefs.
Marky Mark probably thought getting publicly crucified for presiding over a company that allows Russian bots to spread fake news and enables neo-Nazis to stoke the flames of racial hatred would the low point of his 2018.
And maybe it was.
But losing $16 billion in personal wealth as shareholders call for your head probably still stings just a bit.
Yes, it was a rough day on Wall Street, as Facebook stocks plummetted more than 20 percent, seemingly in response to the company’s recent rash of scandals and bad press.
Of course, even after losing more money in a single day than most people could spend in five lifetimes, Zuck is still worth more than $68 billion, so you probably won’t see him doing the Floss for nickels outside a VA hospital anytime soon.
But the loss puts him below Warren Buffett on the list of the world’s richest people, which is amusing for at least two reasons:
1. People actually like Buffett, whereas the sight of Zuckerberg causes most folks to fantasize about perpetrating a fatal wedgie, and
2. We like to imagine Buffett calling Zuck, saying, “How’s my ass taste, kid?” and promptly hanging up the phone.
Of course, it wasn’t just Facebook’s affiliations with Cambridge Analytica and the Pepe the Frog set that have stocks and profit margins plummeting.
The site’s ongoing efforts to become Snapchat for old people are also causing “unforeseen growth cessations” and other mumbo-jumbo that basically means “we might be f-cked.”
“We plan to grow and promote certain engaging experiences like Stories that currently have lower levels of monetization, and we are also giving people who use our services more choices around data privacy, which may have an impact on our revenue growth,” says CFO David Wehner.
Again, this is all relative, as Facebook’s market cap is still valued at about $120 billion, so your aunt Sharon’s favorite venue for sharing “wine o’clock” memes won’t be going away anytime soon.
But the important thing is that today’s news affirms the increasingly popular theory that Mark Zuckerberg is not the savior of the Western world, but just some code jockey who was in the right place at the right time.
Watch for him and fellow embodiment of the evils of late capitalism Elon Musk to announce a plan for world domination any day now.