An Annotated Guide to Every Harvard Crimson Article Mentioned in The Social Network (2024)

Photo by Elaine Chan and Priscilla Chan.The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin’s romp through the infancy of Facebook, did quite well at the box office this weekend, taking in $23 million and handily beating its prime competition, a film about owls whose title doesn’t really matter. If you number among the millions who saw the movie, you’ll notice that The Harvard Crimson was something of an uncredited co-star. In many scenes, the narrative is able to progress as lucidly and quickly as it does because characters read each other (and the audience) expository articles from the undergraduate daily. For The Social Network completist, we’ve located every Crimson piece mentioned in the film.The scene: We first meet Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) in a dining hall. Over breakfast, the three discuss a Crimson article about Facemash.com, Mark Zuckerberg’s original foray into social Web sites. Facemash, which allowed users to indicate which of two randomly selected students was better looking, achieved instantaneous success (and infamy) before Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) was forced to shutter the site.

The article: “Hot or Not? Website Briefly Judges Looks,” November 4, 2003.

Notable passage: “‘I don’t see how it can go back online. Issues about violating people’s privacy don’t seem to be surmountable. The primary concern is hurting people’s feelings,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘I’m not willing to risk insulting anyone.’”

The scene: Zuckerberg appears before the Harvard Administrative Board on charges of privacy and copyright violations stemming from his work on Facemash. He tells university officials that he’s “apologized in The Crimson to the A.B.H.W. [Association of Black Harvard Women], to Fuerza Latina and to any women at Harvard who might have been insulted as I take it they were by the things that have been said to me in the last week.”

The article: Zuckerberg’s apology appeared in the aforementioned “Hot or Not? Website Briefly Judges Looks” story. A report about his meeting with the Ad Board appeared two weeks later in an article titled “Facemash Creator Survives Ad Board” that ran on November 19, 2003.

Notable passage: “The site was created entirely by Zuckerberg over the last week in October, after a friend gave him the idea.”

The scene: Narendra recently stumbled upon the existence of thefacebook.com. He informs the Winklevie, one of whom—Cameron, specifically—places a call to their father’s lawyer. “It’s titled, ‘Hundreds Register for New Facebook Website’ and then the sub-headline is ‘Facemash creator seeks new reputation with latest online project,’” Winklevoss says in what would be only one of many angry conversations with their lawyer.

The article: “Hundreds Register for New Facebook Website,” February 9, 2004.

Notable passage: “While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the intention of generating revenue. ‘I’m not going to sell anybody’s e-mail address,’ he said. ‘At one point I thought about making the website so that you could upload a resume too, and for a fee companies could search for Harvard job applicants. But I don’t want to touch that. It would make everything more serious and less fun.’”

The scene: Narendra informs the Winklevie that Facebook is expanding to include other colleges. “He’s expanding to Yale, Columbia and Stanford, it’ll be in The Crimson tomorrow,” he says.

The article: “Columbia Rebukes TheFacebook.com,” March 9, 2004.

Notable passage: “Zuckerberg said he has not advertised the website at the other schools because he wants to see how the network would grow organically.”

The scene: Zuckerberg confronts Eduardo Saverin, co-founder and onetime C.F.O. of Facebook, about animal-cruelty charges stemming from his Phoenix-club hazing process. Saverin, forced to carry around a live chicken for a week, has been accused of animal cruelty. Zuckerberg is seen reading from the Crimson. “I’m not the expert but being connected to torturing animals is probably bad for business,” Zuckerberg says. The article, which does not mention Saverin, was published before the advent of Facebook.

The article: “Harvard Phoenix Club Accused of Animal Cruelty,” December 8, 2003.

Notable passage: “Several friends of Phoenix members said this weekend that they had heard that the club’s initiation does involve raising chickens but that they do not believe that the animals are tortured.”