r/technology • u/NowThatsMalarkey • Feb 21 '25

Social Media Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover didn’t make people like him, study shows

https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/20/mark-zuckerbergs-makeover-didnt-make-people-like-him-study-shows/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANAZlr-hGuhX1KqqPjBTkTce5FHYoTfozy456eW6cuu8YldzC5rpGfIlP07_a0jXdYc_eaaM6DrAXHX5G8e2xGc5SpbfTOxsJAwxR81w_TBGJlcjoLsVnZ8PWO1lNJgWgzm3MMz0BHDbCl-W5ehgrTueoJBD4LubB0aUd2ecJ39Y
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932

u/Toiretachi Feb 21 '25

But he wears a gold chain!

475

u/[deleted] Feb 21 '25

Plus all his RAD Roman dictator quotes on his shirt!

It's SO COOL simping for 2000 year old dictators!!!

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u/Noblesseux Feb 22 '25 edited Feb 23 '25

It is REALLY fucking weird how obsessed with the Romans these guys are while often knowing absolutely nothing about Rome. They think about Rome like it's some perfect civilization when it literally was in turmoil like every couple months for most of its history.

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u/martxel93 Feb 22 '25

What have the Romans ever done for us?

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u/littlelordgenius Feb 22 '25

The aqueduct.

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u/Noblesseux Feb 22 '25

Just to be clear here: Rome in fact did not create aqueducts, they're just associated with them because they had a bunch of them that survived in good enough condition for people to document them.

Aqueducts arrived spontaneously in quite a few places because as it turns out: as a species that needs water to live, we tend to treat figuring out how to move it around as a priority. There are examples of aqueducts in places like Crete that go back to like hundreds of years before the Romans, examples in India, examples in South America, etc.

Rome's biggest skill in a lot of ways is that they would see a good idea and go "wait why aren't WE doing that?" and find ways to incorporate it into their strategy.

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u/Actual-Departure-843 12d ago

"Rome's biggest skill in a lot of ways is that they would see a good idea and go "wait why aren't WE doing that?"

A lot like Marc Zuckerberg then!

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u/Noblesseux 12d ago

Except for the part where they were *good* at it.

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u/banjo_assassin Feb 22 '25

And the sanitation.

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u/GiniInABottle Feb 22 '25

Yes, but besides the aqueduct and sanitation and roads, what have the Romans done for us??

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u/phatmahn Feb 22 '25

irrigation?

2

u/pirateg3cko Feb 23 '25

Bigusth Dickusth.

4

u/Bhuddhi Feb 22 '25

Fun fact all those ideas were taken by Romans not invented by them, they just had a habit of burning books and history wherever they went and tried to gaslight their empire that they came up with shit.

Which is completely on brand

5

u/WhisperTits Feb 23 '25

So you're saying for us to have the next revolution in technology we should be stealing it 🤔. I think you're onto something. -Xi Jinping

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u/Bhuddhi 10d ago

I mean that’s how technology is developed 😭 one nation takes another nations tech and rebrands it as its own. Sometimes it stolen sometimes it’s a trade negotiation. I mean we as America do “take” a lot of technology from foreign individuals we end up nationalizing to try to hold a monopoly of said tech. The iPhone isn’t even primarily made in the US but is one of the United States biggest exports. Also kinda ironic because China will most likely get a lot further with AI than us because of all the western restrictions on AI development vs their lack there-of. Speaking of China the west literally took guns from them 😭😭 historically speaking we’ve been in a tit for tat with the eastern hemisphere of taking and developing tech for like 1000+ years at this point.

TLDR moral of the story - humans should just share tech cause someone gonna steal it and rebrand anyways

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u/martxel93 Feb 23 '25

All empires across history are built upon the suffering of endless amounts of people. Romans are no different, of course they did a lot of shitty stuff.

But even if they didn’t invent those things, wasn’t it the Romans that extended those commodities across the Imperium?

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u/Bhuddhi 10d ago

They extended a lot of those commodities to seat of the Roman Empire, but there’s some evidence to suggest that they’ve also conquered existing civilizations with their own aqueduct systems and just extended (or in some cases demolished) the network once they took over. It’s more like they had better kept records in a language that they made widely accessible across multiple regions while actively destroying the history and architecture of civilizations that they’ve conquered over time. Over time these people would associate their deeds and triumphs with Rome, and effectively assimilate their history to a Roman centric one (which as you pointed out is the standard practice for most empires). There’s an argument to be made that there is more lost history under Rome than any other empire, as they were also known to take paper texts and write over them/burn them to keep populations focused on spreading Roman history as opposed to local history and religion.

We’ve been lead to believe Rome spread certain ideas throughout the old world but Rome wasn’t exactly as cohesive an empire as they made themselves out to be in texts and written records. As archeologists uncover more about our story, we’re coming to learn that history has been written by the victor, and most of our historical knowledge is Eurocentric/stems from European culture, and we’re uncovering that the world was a lot bigger and a lot more advanced than we initially thought and a lot of our impressions of the world being savage and barbaric around those times was because of a habit of Eurocentric (and arguably most cultures) documents to label most non Europeans or even local tribes as savages and inhuman. Do that for 2000 years and your readers will inevitably discredit other civilizations that didn’t have the same impact as Rome

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u/Bhuddhi 10d ago

Some other comment on this thread put it best, Rome was very good at taking ideas and rebranding it as their own, and once powerful enough they did a good job at decimating civilizations to the level of erasing or assimilating them into history

9

u/kingburp Feb 22 '25

The Romans came up with porn websites as well. They would draw comics of the latest videos of people boning then hand them out across the whole empire.

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u/tgwombat Feb 22 '25

The tubes we’ve got today would blow their minds.

1

u/ajakafasakaladaga Feb 24 '25

They had tubes that took water from the aqueducts into houses. They were made of lead

1

u/tgwombat Feb 24 '25

Sounds nice. I bet they went absolutely mad for them!

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u/Icey210496 Feb 22 '25

I thought one of the more successful early attempts at a Republic was cool despite its flaws. I'm from Asia though and we're just all monarchies.

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u/n_choose_k Feb 22 '25

It's a Monty Python reference. :)

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u/Icey210496 Feb 23 '25

Ah I only watched the Holy Grail one. Life of Brian has been on my list forever!

0

u/Elmer_Fudd01 Feb 22 '25

Invented equal opportunity..... Enslavement.

35

u/Addahn Feb 22 '25

All the elites think they’re going to be Caesar, when in actuality they’re more likely to be Pompey, or Lepidus in the best-case scenario

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u/dv666 Feb 22 '25

All the elites think they’re going to be Caesar,

He got stabbed 30 times.

2

u/churchofcrust Feb 22 '25

Why should Caesar get to stomp around like a giant, while the rest of us try not to get smushed under his big feet? What’s so great about Caesar? Hm? Brutus is just as cute as Caesar. Brutus is just as smart as Caesar. People totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar. And when did it become okay for one person to be the boss of everybody, huh? Because that’s not what Rome is about. We should totally just stab Caesar!

1

u/bk_guy3 Feb 22 '25

Didn’t expect Gretchen Wieners to show up in this discussion, but here we are.

2

u/Sparrowbuck Feb 22 '25

Marcus Aurelius’ nepo baby successor.

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u/Noblesseux Feb 22 '25

I think this is kind of part of the problem, yes. A lot of these people seem to not realize that that Rome was basically plagued with political infighting, civil wars, etc. A lot of the political class was like constantly getting killed, exiled, and so on because they were just constantly in one form of power struggle or another.

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u/jolle2001 Feb 23 '25

Personally I hope for them to be Crassus

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u/Legal_Expression3476 Feb 22 '25

It's mental illness. Delusions of grandeur.

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u/Noblesseux Feb 22 '25

I think delusions of grandeur are probably a significant part of it. I think they like the "story" of Rome because they're incredibly susceptible to propaganda and a lot of what we think when we think about Rome was propaganda.

The buildings, a lot of the stories, the founding mythos... a lot of it was straight up constructed intentionally to give a certain image of Rome that kind of ignores the filth and constant violence.

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u/Big-Veterinarian2269 Feb 22 '25 edited Feb 22 '25

Rome was a dystopian dictatorship that murdered and enslaved people by millions. Their favourite pastime was public torture. It was like Russia today, but much worse. Which is why these guys like it.

-10

u/Comfortable-Will231 Feb 22 '25

Russia is great actually.

The only bad leader for the most part is North Korea everyone else can be worked with

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u/GayoMagno Feb 22 '25

What he should know about Romans is that they despised Jews and Hadrian alone was responsible of the creation of Palestine almost two thousand years ago, he almost single handedly eliminated Judaism as a whole.

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u/BulbuhTsar Feb 22 '25

I've got folks on that side fighting against me with their google searches when I've got a degree in Classics. And I don't know why they're so obsessed. A graduate professor in a different field loved my references to the classical world, only for us to find out he had a private ultra conservative YouTube channel.

1

u/kingburp Feb 22 '25

Did he film the grift videos in his sleep? Literally one of my worst nightmares.

1

u/Comfortable-Will231 Feb 22 '25

Oh no! You’d better call the thought police! How dare he!

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u/BulbuhTsar Feb 22 '25

He's allowed to talk about bringing back slavery and burning Protestants all he wants, but he probably should not be teaching. There is, surprise, Protestants and non whites amongst his students who he clearly has biases against. As for missing and misunderstanding antiquity, that's just poor academics, and I expect better from a professor since that's his literal job. At the end of the day he was let go for sexually harassing my peers.

But yeah, thought police, it's really the rest of us who are the problem.

0

u/Comfortable-Will231 Feb 22 '25

Oh no! I bet he complimented a girls hair but she actually identified as a two spirit he/them 🤣🤣🙄

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u/East_Information_247 Feb 22 '25

Im just not sure whether they're emulating Hitler or that whole ethos lends itself to worshipping ancient Rome for its ramanticised grandeur, masculinity, and military totalitarianism.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '25

US settlers were basicly cosplaying Roman republic but forgot the Roman law somehow idk

1

u/BankLikeFrankWt Feb 23 '25

While on a team trying to recreate the fall of Rome in his own country

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u/FloppyDorito Feb 22 '25

Dude, that's DESIGNER, BRO. He's dressing FRESH, fam. He's one of the cool Zoomers now!

2

u/elreniel2020 Feb 22 '25

why simp for 2000 year old dictators when you helped one getting into office?

5

u/TorrenceMightingale Feb 22 '25

Ok wait that did it for me. Just clicked the like button.

2

u/It_does_get_in Feb 22 '25

and yet doesn't rap or own an oil tanker.

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u/Ok-Platypus-5236 Feb 22 '25

“But she’s got a new hat!”

1

u/MacaroonNo2253 Feb 22 '25

Gold chain, Joe Rogan hunting talks and a $900k watch didn't do the trick, hmmm

1

u/icein2017 Feb 22 '25

I remember when he just started the transformation and people were making memes of him with a gold chain. After that he actually started wearing one to be more “likable”

1

u/kingburp Feb 22 '25

You've got to hand it to him though, he's not AS unlikeable as Elon Musk.

1

u/AquaticAlchemy Feb 23 '25

But he does bjj!

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u/LeeDUBS Feb 21 '25

Ngl the buss down chain is sick af

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u/Toiretachi Feb 21 '25

Is it though? Look at everything above the chain!

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '25

[deleted]

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u/LeeDUBS Feb 22 '25

OMG I couldn't even finish that video. There's no way that's real is it??