Zuckerberg & Putin Plot Civilization Overthrow via Facebook Secret Message
Mark Zuckerberg looked down at his Apple Watch to check Steve Jobs’ weather forecast. Since Steve died a few years ago, he’d taken on a more omnipotent role at Apple, chief amongst his new responsibilities, updating the iPhone’s worldwide weather forecasts. Now, whenever anyone opened the Weather app on their iPhone, they were getting Steve Jobs’ analysis straight from his Cloud in heaven.
Zuck needed to know how cold it was going to get in Menlo Park that evening so he could pick out the right hoodie for his top secret investors meeting with the Russians. Moscow was 14 hours ahead now according to the New World Time Zones Steve had established from his Cloud in heaven.
The Russians told president-elect Trump that instead of censoring the Internet, the Americans could keep it as long as Facebook proliferated their Russian-approved hyper-targeted “fake news” using their algorithm. Fake News was a cute new name for modern day propaganda that confused the Americans — sort of like Buzzfeed, UpRoxx, Medium and The Huffington Post.
Fake News was catchy. No one could tell the difference. And the Americans didn’t have time to check sources anymore. They were too busy agonizing over Instagram filters and asking earnest questions about the health benefits of bone broth. Scrolling through Fake News on Facebook was hilarious and fun for them. They were growing addicted at an ever-accelerating pace that even surprised Putin.
The Russians came up with Fake News around the same time that they created the “alt-right,” a cute name for 21st century American White Supremacists. Alt-Right was catchy. It sounded like a keyboard stroke to create a funny emoji on Twitter or a hipster acoustic-electro band composed of a couple of bros with beautiful facial hair and sad eyes that liberals would love. Dude, have you heard the new Alt-Right song? It’s dope!
The cool name distracted and confused the Americans. How could the Alt-Right be a malicious underground gang of racists and anti-Semites working towards the rise of an authoritarian White Nation in America? It was genius. They even had a cool logo in italics with sharp angles, kind of like AVICII.
ALT-RT.
Zuck had been briefed on all of this. It wasn’t what he dreamed of for Facebook when he invented it in his dorm room at Harvard, fantasizing about whether any of the girls in his class would ever sleep with him. When he began ranking them online according to their hotness, he thought Facebook would be an engine of great social good. But what could he do now? He was in too deep.
The Russians had been calling the shots at Facebook since 2011 when Aaron Sorkin released The Social Network as a diversion tactic. By the time Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In in 2013, the Russians were already priming Trump for his presidential bid and proliferating fascinating Fake News stories about The Celebrity Apprentice.
Of course, NBC Universal was in on all of it. Of course they were. Americans had been watching cyborg versions of Matt Lauer and Chuck Todd for nearly a decade as they spoon-fed them a highly nuanced edition of Fake News. No one could tell the difference and, more importantly, no one cared.
Zuck logged onto his encrypted Secret Messages on Facebook. Putin was already there, waiting for him. His programmers created Secret Messages specifically so he and Vlady could chat undetected as often as they wanted. So far, the only people who even knew Secret Messages existed were the most brilliant Millennial Social Media Influencers of our time and a few high clearance government operatives.
Many years ago, in his first Christmas card to Mark, Putin told him to call him Vlady. Mark pictured the card now affectionately. On the cover was a painted portrait of the iconic photograph of Vlady, bare-breasted on horseback, riding through the rugged Russian tundra. Inside, he wrote: “Dear Mark Zuckerberg, I look forward to plotting the downfall of America with you. Don’t worry. You’ll make billions. All My Love, Vlady PS: Please, Mark, call me Vlady PPS: My favorite American TV show is Celebrity Apprentice. What’s yours? TTYL.”
They’d come so far in so little time, Mark thought. Nostalgia stirred within him and he let out a deep sigh.
“Vlady,” Mark’s voice cracked, “I’m scared. The CIA knows you and The Dukes hacked into the DNC and that bitch Hillary’s emails. It’s only a matter of time before they realize that you own Facebook and that we’ve been rigging the election for P-E Trump this whole time.”
“Mark, be calm my child,” Vlady purred in his sexy Russian accent. “There’s nothing that a steady drip of Fake News and diversion can’t solve in further subduing the Americans.”
Vlady’s voice gave Mark goose bumps. He sounded like Dracula and it immediately calmed him down. Of course Vlady would know what to do, Mark thought.
“Most of the Americans don’t even understand why I’m a threat,” Putin laughed. “They don’t know what the Cold War was. They confuse it with the Ice Age. They think it’s a cool video game, like Predator Penguins vs. Alien Polar Bears. They can’t remember anything that happened in world affairs since the debut of American Idol.”
Yes, Vlady was an encrypted executive producer on American Idol. He and beautiful Ryan Seacrest were once very close. They used to summer in Sochi together, back when they were planning the 2014 Summer Olympics and implanting Ryan as a host at NBC Universal. They’d spend entire afternoons at the beauty salon getting highlights and manicures, reading gossip magazines and giggling like schoolgirls. Vlady thought back on those summers fondly, but all of that was before their falling out.
Vladimir couldn’t control his jealousy of Seacrest’s tight physique — he could eat anything and, still, he looked like that! After one particularly heated argument, he had no choice but to cancel American Idol for good. He’d find other tactics to overthrow American democracy. Still, he’d never forget those mornings with Seacrest on the Black Sea, wind whipping through their freshly frosted tips, dipping plain toast into mugs of piping hot black coffee.
Vlady laid out the plan to Zuck. He was to push the Russian’s hyper-targeted Fake News package out immediately. It was designed to counter the latest discoveries by the White House. In no time, even journalists would lose interest in the story in favor of checking Facebook’s Trending News topics on Alan Thicke, Hugh Jackman and The Big Bang Theory.
Everything would be okay. Even if the Americans found out that the Russians owned Facebook, what would they do? Stop using it? Impossible! They had a good chuckle at that and logged off Secret Messages.
Before closing the app, Mark checked his Friend Requests one more time. That bitch Erica, his fictional girlfriend from The Social Network, still hadn’t accepted his Friend Request and neither had the actor Jesse Eisenberg. He cared deeply for Jesse and wanted a signed copy of his new short story collection Bream Gives Me Hiccups. Vlady would love it as a Christmas gift.
Zuck walked outside and zipped up his hoodie a few inches to combat Silicon Valley’s night chill. He gazed at the lights twinkling on San Francisco Bay and wondered how cold Steve thought it would get in Moscow that night.
Shayne Benowitz is a Miami-based journalist and contributor to the Miami Herald and The Telegraph.
