Mark Zuckerberg Facebook Congress Memes

YouTube/PBS, Twitter/kashanacauley

Mark Zuckerberg surrounded by photographers is Twitter’s favorite new meme

Tfw everyone's watching you.

 

Tiffany Kelly

Internet Culture

Posted on Apr 10, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 6:58 pm CDT

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg began his testimony today in front of a committee of U.S. senators to explain why Facebook, the company he founded in 2004, couldn’t protect the data for millions of its users.

Naturally, everyone on the internet tuned in for the livestream of the hearing and reacted to it on the other social network—Twitter.

Those memes came in quickly, and a lot of them revolved around Zuckerberg looking, and acting, more like a robot than a human. This is typical commentary for Zuckerberg, as well as Silicon Valley CEOs in general. But the moment that Zuckerberg first took his seat, while surrounded by dozens of photographers pointing their lenses at him, is becoming the internet’s favorite moment of Tuesday’s hearing.

Writer Kashana Cauley tweeted that the moment illustrated “what it’s actually like to be on Facebook.”

https://twitter.com/kashanacauley/status/983781026551029761

Adrian Chen compared the moment to a work by Banksy.

And Jenny Johnson joked about Zuckerberg’s new “status”:

This screengrab has legs. It’s a photo caption contest that everyone can participate in because, well, most people have used Facebook at some point in their lives (or still use it, begrudgingly) and have a lot of opinions about the company giving away data on its users.

https://twitter.com/mirikramer/status/983774583647100930

https://twitter.com/Four_Pins/status/983778007331598338

Zuckerberg’s stoic expression throughout the hearing also creeped everyone out, and screengrabs of his face also made the rounds on Twitter.

Tuesday’s hearing also sparked reactions from other people in the tech community, like this zinger from whistleblower Edward Snowden:

Remember when we were friends with the founders of social networks? Such simpler times.

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*First Published: Apr 10, 2018, 9:07 pm CDT