Mark Zuckerberg and Erica Albright

"Erica Albright's a bitch. You think that's because their family changed their name from Albrecht or do you think it's because all BU girls are bitches? For the record: she may look like a 34C, but she's getting all kinds of help from our friends a Victoria's Secret. She's a 34B, as in barely anything there. False advertising.

"Truth is she has a nice face. I need to do something to take my mind off her. Easy enough, except I need an idea.

"I'm a little intoxicated. I'm not gonna lie. So what if it's not even 10pm and it's a Tuesday night? The Kirkland Facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous Facebook pics."

Sound familiar? It should. It's the beginning of Mark Zuckerberg's infamous blog right before he took the first steps to create Facebook. Well, that's what David Fincher's The Social Network would have us believe. The movie has caused quite the buzz. Not only is it based on the rise of Time Magazine's Person of the Year of 2010, it has also been nominated for various Academy Awards, including Best Actor (Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg), Cinematography, Directing, Film Editing, Music (Original Score), Sound Mixing, Writing (Adapted Screenplay), and Best Picture.

Now you've gotten this far and you're probably wondering what I'm getting at. Well, Erica Albright. Yep, Erica Albright. The same one that supposedly dumped Zuckerberg, opening a can of extreme sarcasm and screw-you that would have people in court and lead to a critically acclaimed film.

Some people who've seen The Social Network gave some thought to it's historical accuracy. Well, the number of people who've done this are probably far less than I would like to imagine, but what the hell. If Ridley Scott's Gladiator could have people nodding agreeingly that Rome was founded as a republic, then it's not hard to believe that a lot of people think The Social Network is quite accurate. Which it is not, as far as can be told. And Rome wasn't founded as a republic, by the way.

In a broad sense The Social Network is accurate. Mark Zuckerberg did start Facebook. He had briefly agreed to help Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their partner Divya Narendra to create their social networking site, creatively named HarvardConnection.com, later renamed ConnectU. Zuckerberg's friend Eduardo Saverin did get involved, but not in the Winklevoss/Narendra venture. He got involved to create thefacebook.com.

Hard as it may be to believe, Sean Parker of Napster (not so very) fame did get on board as well. And yes, Saverin did end up with very little shares in the company. Facebook did grow at an enormous rate. Zuckerberg is one of the youngest billionaires in the world. (I read somewhere he's not the youngest one anymore, apparently.) Team Winklevoss did sue Zuckerberg. They eventually settled for $65 million. Eduardo Saverin also sued Zuckerberg. There was also a settlement. How much money was involved was not revealed, but it is known that Saverin was successful in having his name reinstated as co-founder of Facebook. Oh, and before I forget, that PayPal guy Peter Thiel was also involved as an early investor.

So Erica Albright. The girl who called Zuckerberg an asshole, and leaves him with the audience for the rest of the film's almost two hours to decide whether he's an asshole or not. Well, the Zuckerberg in the movie is an asshole. But that's the thing, you see. It's the Zuckerberg in the movie. A movie based broadly on real events, but to what extent?

As a basis for the screenplay, writer Aaron Sorkin used Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Millionaires. When writing his book, Mezrich relied on Eduardo Saverin as main consultant. Interestingly, the author's note to Mezrich's book starts out as follows:

"The Accidental Billionaires is a dramatic, narrative account based on dozens of interviews, hundreds of sources, and thousands of pages of documents, including records from several court proceedings."

One would expect as much when this kind of book is written. Oh, but then:

"There are a number of different—and often contentious—opinions about some of the events that took place. Trying to paint a scene from the memories of dozens of sources—some direct witnesses, some indirect—can often lead to discrepancies. I re-created the scenes in the book based on the information I uncovered from documents and interviews, and my best judgment as to what version most closely fits the documentary record. Other scenes are written in a way that describes individual perceptions without endorsing them."

Mezrich also goes on to say that he had no choice but to recreate instances of dialogue (of course based on his documentation and interviews), and that he sometimes compressed various scenes and changed identities.

And that's pretty much the same thing done in the film adaptation of Mezrich's book.

Now I can get to my point. I decided to Google around a bit, just to see how compressed and altered The Social Network is. Most of my findings were not earth-shatteringly interesting. To the contrary, the film makes some boring detail into some very good drama. I digress. Back to Eria Albright.

I discovered a website belonging to the famous Erica Albright (www.ericaalbright.com). It's not a particularly complicated site. To be honest, it's one of the ugliest sites I've seen in quite some time. But I'm not jumping on filmo Zuckerberg's insult wagon here. I just found it strange that Albright would launch this website and have the first things visitors see be: "This is the OFFICIAL website for me Erica Albright (Yes the Erica Albright who was dating Mark Zuckerberg the founder of the Social Networking website Facebook)".

I know what you're thinking: she's missing some commas. Yes, that is true. But also, the website really has that kind of cheap "Powered by Wordpress" feel. Truthfully, it looks even cheaper. So I tried to find more answers. Where? On Facebook, of course.

There are hundreds of her. Most of them are obvious fakes. They even employ Erica's Facebook pic from the movie (which isn't Erica, it's Rooney Mara). But, since Erica says on her "OFFICIAL" website that she is on Facebook and has reached the limit of her friendability (is that even a word?), it had to be there (4 January 2011). And I found it, along with this little jewel under her About section:

✔ Verified Official Account
© Profile Original & Official
█║▌│█│║▌║││█║▌║▌║

Yeah, right. Although Twitter verifies the accounts of famous people, Facebook does not. And any idiot can create a little Proof of Verification like Erica did. This was not the end, though.

On the website, Erica reports that she had been invited to be on the Ellen DeGeneres Show (5 October 2010). No record of this is to be found elsewhere, unless it goes back to Erica's blog. Furthermore she reports that TMZ.com had figured out where she lives and were outside videotaping her and her friends as they were going out (14 October 2010). She was apparently also being bombarded by requests from major news corporations for interviews, including CNN, but she decided that she would give preference to independent websites and blogs (3 October 2010).

The bunch of dead links of her "full interviews" and silly competitions (?) cleared it up. It's fake. Very fake. Let us not forget her blaming her site being down on account of it being hacked by Zuckerberg himself (27 December 2010).The Accidental Millionaires.
To add insult to injury, Albright is never even mentioned in

According to the WhoIs server, the web address ericaalbright.com was registered on 1 October 2010. Yes, only a few days before the movie opened in theatres. Also, it is registered to David Desvousges of, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Now we know that some movies use viral internet marketing before the movie actually begins rolling in theatres. There was a whole website of the Joker's antics to advertise The Dark Knight in 2008. But that site was very well done. And Erica Albright's "OFFICIAL" website just isn't. It's too cheap to even be a marketing ploy.

Either way, congrats David Desvousges (or whatever your real name may be). You've tricked quite a few people into visiting your website, and some of them have probably clicked on your links and helped your Google AdSense account along quite nicely. According to Alexa's rankings, your website's world ranking is 208,317 and your US ranking is 78,100 (at the time of writing this blog).

So yeah, Erica Albright has no official website. Erica Albright doesn't exist. The person she's based on is reportedly named Jessica Elona, and she doesn't seem to be as hungry for attention or money as the Erica Albright of ericaalbright.com.

Erica Albright is a bitch.

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