Preliminary impact
Since its release, The Social Network has inspired involvement in start-ups and social media.[104] Bob Lefsetz has stated that: "watching this movie makes you want to run from the theatre, grab your laptop and build your own empire,"[105] noting that The Social Network has helped fuel an emerging perception that "techies have become the new rock stars."[106] This has led Dave Knox to comment that: "fifteen years from now we might just look back and realize this movie inspired our next great generation of entrepreneurs."[105] After seeing the movie, Zuckerberg was quoted as saying he is "interested to see what effect The Social Network has on entrepreneurship", noting that he gets "lots of messages from people who claim that they have been very much inspired... to start their own company."[107] Saverin echoed these sentiments, stating that the film may inspire "countless others to create and take that leap to start a new business."[108] In one such instance, the co-founders of Wall Street Magnate confirmed that they were inspired to create the fantasy trading community after watching The Social Network.[109]
Following his success with the film, Sorkin became attached to another project about a technology company, writing the script for the 2015 biopic Steve Jobs, which used a similar format.[110] Another Facebook film may be produced, as Sheryl Sandberg has signed a deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to develop her 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, into a movie.[111]
Post-2010s assessment
Following the close of the decade, The Social Network was recognized as one of the best films of the 2010s. Metacritic reported that it was listed on over 30 film critics' top-ten lists for the 2010s, including eight first-place rankings and four second-place rankings. Metacritic ranked The Social Network third overall, following Mad Max: Fury Road and Moonlight.[112] Esquire named The Social Network the best of the 2010s, calling it Citizen Kane "for the Internet age" and dubbing it "the movie of our new millennium".[113] With Facebook going "from a utopian, world-shrinking force of good to a potential threat to democracy", Esquire wrote, "Fincher seemed to sense all of this and more long before anyone else. And his brilliant, troubling film bristles with that queasy sense of prophecy and prescience."[113] Polygon, calling The Social Network the best film of the decade, wrote, "The Social Network, by chance or by design, has become one of the most immensely relevant movies of this decade... But after nearly a decade of watching Facebook 'move fast and break things,' including news websites, social video, politics, etc., the movie's tangible sense of tension can easily be reinterpreted as foreboding for what comes after you make a billion friends."[114] Director Quentin Tarantino called the film the best of the 2010s, singling out the script by Aaron Sorkin, whom he described as "the greatest active dialogist".[115]
Rolling Stone ranked The Social Network second after Moonlight (2016) on its end-of-decade list, describing it as "one deliciously re-watchable preview of the apocalypse, as entertaining and cheeky as it is troubling and startlingly prescient".[116] Time Out named it the fourth-best of the decade, "Powered by a relentless, clinical Aaron Sorkin script, directed with sinuous grace by David Fincher and loaded with smirking, smart-ass central performances, The Social Network is arguably the most important and prophetic film of our era, itself a depressing thought."[117] ScreenCrush ranked The Social Network eighth, referring to it as "[Fincher's] spiritual sequel to Fight Club, another story of a embittered, lonely man who discovers unleashing his rage at society has unexpected consequences".[118] Mashable, listing The Social Network among the top 15 films of the 2010s, said of the story, "It was everything young people could be and everything older generations feared in us before a decade of blaming [us for] problems we didn't create and can't solve."[119] IndieWire ranked The Social Network sixteenth among the decade's films, writing, "The Social Network is both a thrilling, queasy exploration of how Facebook came to be and a searing indictment of what it would inevitably become."[120] Inverse listed the film among those defining "class rage" in the 2010s, "As a gently prodding diagnosis of class conflict, The Social Network is a logical place to start."[121]
