The Social Network 2 Shouldn’t Be About Facebook

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has personally expressed interest in following up The Social Network with a sequel and recently explained that he personally blames Facebook and its ripple effect on culture for the political state of America today, including acts of political violence like the January 6 insurrection.

While Facebook has certainly caused its fair share of problems in the world of politics and culture, it seems clear that Twitter was just as bad, if not worse, throughout most of the 2010s. The Social Network 2 should showcase the rise of Twitter, the site’s overtaking of Facebook from a cultural perspective, and the chaos that followed.

By this point, I’m sorry to say, Facebook has been wholly claimed by the elderly and confused, and people who foolishly never thought Twitter would take off, stubbornly refusing to swap platforms… like me.

While the site was once a thriving town square of interaction, political arguments, and trashy couples breaking up and getting back together in the most public way possible, these days, the site has essentially become a place to see clothing advertisements and the occasional Sopranos meme. All this is to say, I don’t think The Social Network 2 would be very interesting if it invested its focus on this platform.

Twitter, on the other hand, is rife with the worst content mankind has to offer, and millions of people are eating it up like it’s their full-time job. The Social Network 2 could focus on the fact that Twitter rapidly became the go-to place to cyberbully celebrities and senators alike, the primary platform for controversial U.S. President Donald Trump to spread absurd conspiracies on, and the sole focus of a bidding war from the apartheid emerald mine profiteer himself, Elon Musk.

Jesse Eisenberg could still reprise his role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network 2, as the billionaire Facebook founder has engaged in a very public dispute with Musk in the last year or so. In this way, the film could showcase multiple sites, take aim at multiple tech weirdos, and lead audiences down the domino path of social media’s existence directly into the overrun halls of the Capitol, fronted by the QAnon Shaman.

Plus, if The Social Network 2 commits to the practice of showcasing all social networking sites, we could even expand the IP into a franchise, taking aim at Reddit, Tumblr, or any other glowing blue cesspool utilized by the public to never go outside. Twitter, and its recent name-change to X, would just generally make a better subject for a Social Network installment than Facebook, as the site has far more impact on culture and politics in the modern day than its predecessor.