Social Network Hype Round-Up: Mark Zuckerberg Outspends Everybody to Accidentally Promote Film

To paraphrase Full Metal Jacket, a day without a breathless scan of the Social Network superculture is like a day without sunshine. Or maybe Marion Berry said that about crack. I'm terrible with these kinds of things. But I'll always have RSS. To wit:

· No good deed goes unpunished, and thus Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has drawn more than a few skeptical double-takes after pledging a $100 million donation to faltering public schools in Newark, N.J. This of course, occurs the week before The Social Network's release -- a release, you'll remember, that Zuckerberg himself is said to dread because of its character implications. Whether he's a high-functioning altruist or just an ass-covering billionaire, that squeal of delight you heard was a Sony marketing exec exulting all the way out in Culver City.

· Coincidentally: "I hope that people understand that I have an enormous amount of empathy for Mark Zuckerberg," director David Fincher told Time. "I know what it is to be in a room, as a 21-year-old, with a bunch of grownups. You're hawking your wares, and they're all looking at you like, 'Isn't it cute how passionate he is?' So I really understood his frustration."

· And prepare for a few hundred of these unconfirmed Mark Zuckerberg sightings as preview screenings and the wide release approach.

· Finally, for the record, the author of the Facebook opus on which Social Network was loosely based raved: "I personally came out of there saying this is the best movie I've ever seen." Ben Mezrich continued, somewhat hilariously: "Facebook wants to keep calling it fiction, but there's a lot of documentation. It may be the most documented movie ever made." There you have it.