A scrapbooked Facebook feed reveals an alternate future designed by an art hacker, a journalist, a sociologist, and a comedian.
Where did the idea come from?
Well, for a while there I maintained a conceptual Tumblr blog called The Printed Internet. Earlier this year Adrian Chen emailed me about maybe expanding its gimmick into a full-fledged Carnival of Gimmickry (not his words), as part of a larger project he was starting called Useless Press.
Pretty much from the start the idea was to make a near-future Facebook. The difference was that originally Zuckerberg had actually died (versus fled), leaving his eight brothers to jostle for control of the company, per Zuckerberg’s will. And so I ended up spending hours and hours writing sentences like “they say Zuckerbergs can’t be tamed—that their very DNA forces them to pursue fast-paced lives of boozing and meaningless sex. Well, tell that to Bertram Zuckerberg,” or “[Seamus is] just your average down-home country Zuckerberg,” etc. Eventually the interlocking histories and feuds of this Zuckerberg clan became so complex, and so untethered from any kind of satirical ‘point,’ that it seemed wise to just abandon the concept entirely. But one of the brothers—a straight-shooting, sense-lacking Texas mattress magnate—became Buck Calhoun, Zuckerberg’s replacement as CEO in the finished version.
By the way, you know those Art of Fiction interviews? This is what I imagine they’d sound like: If The Paris Review took a break from interviewing eminent novelists to chat up the least-stable-looking person on the McDonald’s bathroom line.
Did an interview with Vice’s Creators Project, about The Data Drive. (Is it gauche to post this stuff? Let me have this, come on.)
