“Mark Zuckerberg has taken over part of Hawaii to build a massive compound. Here are the craziest features of his secretive lair, such as hidden doors, an underground bunker, and a luxury Ewok village.”
—@NYmag on X
(Team Zuckerberg has gathered in a conference room in Menlo Park.)
P.R. Director: Mark, all of us in P.R. and marketing think the Hawaii property is an awesome opportunity to broaden your image—I think we can diffuse your “entitled nerd in flip-flops” energy and go full-on “Bond villain.” All we need is a hollowed-out volcano and hundreds of jumpsuit-wearing extras running around with an air of impending doom.
P.R. Assistant: Impending doom is so hot right now.
P.R. DIRECTOR: Right? I’m also thinking Mark’s living room in Hawaii could have a lap pool with a big, hangry shark in it: nothing says “Hello” to a compliance officer or a journalist quite like an apex predator thrashing underfoot.
P.R. ASSISTANT: Love that. Apex predator, thrashing.
P.R. DIRECTOR: But any Bond villain–ish stuff would need to be complemented by whatever vibes Mark himself is putting into the room. So, Mark—say a competitor or an antagonist who you’ve handcuffed to an industrial laser screams, “Do you expect me to talk?,” how do you respond?
Zuckerberg: “Actually, I prefer to text.”
P.R. ASSISTANT: Sick burn.
P.R. DIRECTOR: Super sick burn. But what if you learned to say, “No, I expect you to die!,” and then let loose with a villainous mwah-ha-ha and a tiny rivulet from your weeping eye.
Zuckerberg: But if you tell someone they’ll die, there’s a 100 percent probability that they will, eventually. You’re just stating biological imperatives, which is the province of idiots and instructors at community colleges. If I really want to take someone down, I’ll usually say, “I bet you still have an AOL account!”
P.R. ASSISTANT: Blammo! Dead.
P.R. DIRECTOR: Dead on arrival. But I was thinking more like—remember how in From Russia with Love, Rosa Klebb has that knife in her shoe? Do you have anything like that?
Zuckerberg: I can make fart sounds with my armpit.
P.R. ASSISTANT: That’d really put a lunch with advertisers up on its feet!
P.R. DIRECTOR: Totally. But wouldn’t that lunch be even more powerful if Mark had a metal mouth like Richard Kiel’s in Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me?
Zuckerberg: No. That’s not for me. Every time I see a woman wearing silver lipstick, I think, “Someone couldn’t wait to get the tinfoil off her baked potato!”
(Laughter from the room.)
Zuckerberg: These ideas all kind of suck. Brain drain commencing, 3-2-1 …
(He stands and leaves the room.)
“If I really want to take someone down, I’ll usually say, ‘I bet you still have an AOL account!’”
P.R. DIRECTOR: Damn, lost him.
P.R. ASSISTANT: He seems kind of stuck on the dispassionate logic-master thing. Which is also … kind of scary.
P.R. DIRECTOR: Yes, but not enough … Hey, how about this: some of the Bond villains work in tandem, like General Gogol and Miss Rubelvitch, or Max Zorin and May Day. What if we brought in a sidekick for Mark, someone like …
(She slaps her forehead: an idea! To the ceiling:)
P.R. DIRECTOR: Siri, who is today’s Hervé Villechaize?
(Resounding silence from Siri. The P.R. director sighs loudly in frustration, then buries her face in the conference table, with her arms over her head. After a beat:)
P.R. ASSISTANT: What about Tucker Carlson? We could outfit him with a bow tie that cuts through steel like Oddjob’s bowler.
P.R. DIRECTOR: I think he’s too whiny.
P.R. ASSISTANT: Ivanka?
P.R. DIRECTOR: Interesting. She sounds like a Bond villain. But what are her henchman superpowers?
P.R. ASSISTANT: Affectlessness, and a pile of Saudi cash.
P.R. DIRECTOR: Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
Henry Alford is a New York–based writer and the author of And Then We Danced