Zuck is the Zeitgeist
Or at least the tail end of it.
A copy of the handbook Erasing Institutional Bias has been languishing in my local “free library” for weeks now. The first time I saw it, it occurred to me that its forlorn presence might be a sign of the times. Recent events have confirmed that intuition.
Which events?
Of course, the election hangs over us all — but I’m thinking in particular of the sudden shock-and-awe campaign over at software company Meta, previously known as Facebook, which reached its height this past weekend.
It started with the company announcing early last week — via a front-facing video from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, clad in his new “chill dude” uniform of a wide black tee, broccoli hair, and a gold chain — that the election had been a “cultural tipping point, towards prioritizing free speech,” and now the Meta would end most content moderation, axing most of its fact-checking operation and loosening rules around hate speech. Then, a few more policy and staff changes hit the news: the ending of DEI operations at the company, the unexplained departure of its VP of Civil Rights, and the addition of UFC CEO (and noted Trump pal) Dana White to its Board of Directors, to predictable internal protest. There were public and private briefings on all the changes, given mainly to conservative media figures —including, of course, a quick jaunt to Mar-a-Lago to see the man himself.
The whole rollout ended (for now?) with Zuckerberg giving a 3-hour interview to the new king of media, Joe Rogan, in which the CEO —again: big tee, chain— talked MMA and bow-hunting and complained about how companies are “culturally neutered” and “feminized,” society had become “emasculated,” and that the whole system was in need of “good masculine energy.” The word “energy” was used a lot.
We learned that a new devotion to Jiu-jitsu has made Zuck’s neck bigger (congrats!), and that fighting with his “buddies” has taught him that aggression is good. He kills the invasive pigs on his ranch in Hawaii! He butchers cattle! He’s now man enough to handle 30-50 feral hogs! (This, I think, is implied.)
***
New Year, New Zuck, I suppose. One barely knows where to begin.
My first thought was that this was just Zuckerberg doing what any moneymaking CEO would do: sprinkling some incense onto the altar of the new regime, just as he did for the old one. After all, Zuck is fundamentally reactive and would certainly prefer to avoid alienating a new administration.
But somehow this “free speech” reboot feels like the most alive version of Zuckerberg we’ve seen — just look at the twinkle in his eye! And in listening to him giggling with Joe Rogan, I realized: To suggest that Meta CEO is caving to Trump assumes that he has politics and values that aren’t actually aligned with our future president’s. No… Maybe Zuck isn’t caving, necessarily. Maybe he’s finally doing what he’s wanted to do for a while — and arriving at the place where much of America has already been for years.
To wit:
Tired of debating transgenderism. One of the most pointed moves Meta made this week was to get rid of just about anything that seemed like it was kowtowing to gender activism: disappearing trans and nonbinary themes on its messenger app, softening hate-speech rules around gender specifically, and, to the somewhat self-parodying dismay of some vocal Meta employees, removing tampons from mens’ bathrooms on the company campus, effective immediately. Someone’s fed up.
Re-embracing gender. Workplaces are “feminized”? Society is too “emasculated”? You want to use your crossbow to shoot a hog, and you think men need to bring more aggressive energy to work? In 2020, whispering this to your white-collar cubicle-mate might have gotten you fired for antisociality. In 2025, Mark Zuckerberg is reading out longhouse theory to the masses. As readers will know, I don’t mind a few gender norms myself, but even I am a bit surprised by the vehemency of Zuck’s agreement.
Completely over DEI. Reasonable people can disagree on what an equitable workplace looks like, but the idea that ensuring it should be an organizational priority is, apparently, so 2020. Meta announced it was scrapping its diversity initiatives only after companies like Wal-Mart and Molson Coors had moved to do so weeks before, but it’s doing so with gusto “given the shifting legal and policy landscape.” Once again: RIP Erasing Institutional Bias and other similar guides.
Eager to say whatever the F*** they want. Because having norms for public speech, apparently, is censorship. So release your inhibitions! Feel the rain on your skin! Make an anonymous account to post “look at that tranny” beneath a 17 year-old girl, or “immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit” 20 times in a row ! (Both of these examples of newly permissible speech were included in training for Meta employees about the content moderation change.) The moderators have moved to the Wild Wild West —literally, what remains of the content review team will be relocated to Texas— and the world is your AI-slop and degrading-speech filled oyster, just as God, Trump, and an enormous number of right-wing agitators intended it. (Can you tell I’m not sold on this one?)
Regardless of his motivations, I tend to view Zuckerberg and Meta as a kind of lagging indicator of the general mood. The company was late to VR, late to AI. It lumbers — purchasing or imitating its actually cutting-edge competitors, and aping their policies just before they’ve grown stale. And its CEO is similar: arriving to cultural trends and shared realizations just in time to apologize for missing them.
Thus, if Mark Zuckerberg has jumped on a trend — in this case, the normalization of anti-woke, libertarian politics — you know it’s fully baked. As goes Facebook — the biggest, blandest, normie-est social network in the world — so has gone the nation.
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Not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I was a child of 4chan and the Wild West internet. Shitposting was certainly fun and I think some of the more apocalyptic doomsaying around AI just feels silly and overblown.
On the other hand, much of this apparent embrace of Libertarian policies really seems to come with a huge asterisk attached. It feels like an embrace of extremist political statements, with no protection for other forms of expression. You can call for the extermination of Jews all you want on Twitch but you damn well better keep your VTuber avatars hips covered. You can post all the N-bombs you want, but comprehensive sex education materials require ID verification.
I hope I am wrong and Libertarian actually means Libertarian.
Nice piece Christine. Meta employees getting upset about these changes, now, given everything Meta has done up to this point, reeks of the very hollow liberal progressivism that has exhausted so many Americans. They'll get over it for the very reason they strove so hard to work there in the first place.
And I think Zuck feels he can finally do away with all that by embracing Trump, who is the human embodiment of permission.