Psst! Wanna buy a $900,000 watch?

Psst! Wanna buy a $900,000 watch?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s bad policy shift came with bling that doubled down on his detachment from reality. Here’s why it matters.

By Jeffrey Cole

Jesse Eisenberg nailed it.

His multidimensional portrayal of the unidimensional Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010) was one of the great film performances of all time. It has held up far better than the winner of the Best Actor Oscar that year: Colin Firth for The King’s Speech.

Both are fine actors and turned in great depictions of real people—one historical and the other about to be. The Social Network came out only four years after Zuckerberg emerged as a public figure. With that short runway, Eisenberg captured Zuckerberg’s apparent disinterest in connecting with other people or what they thought about him. That’s deeply ironic considering the company he built connects billions.

The fourteen years since the movie, while extraordinarily generous to his net worth, have not been so kind to Zuckerberg’s public persona. We learned that during times of crisis he disappears. He does not communicate when his companies are implicated in presidential election interference, contributing to misinformation and hate speech, and placing teenagers in peril. Seeming to lack empathy or any kind of understanding of others, Zuckerberg’s public appearances and government testimony have been disastrous. He seems incapable of connecting with an audience or almost anyone.

Contributing to his “not like other guys image” and lack of interest in how he is perceived, it has recently become public knowledge that on his large estate on Kauai, Zuckerberg is building a 5,000 square foot bunker with its own energy and food supplies. He seems to be preparing to literally be detached from everyone on the planet, except those in his bunker.

Recently, Zuckerberg has undergone a makeover, transforming his helmet-like hair into a perm and adorning his T-shirts with chains. Like Jeff Bezos, he appears to have bulked up. At last, he may be interested in his public image, at least as far as his physical look is concerned.

Although Facebook banned Donald Trump after the January 6 insurrection and earned Zuckerberg a threat from the new president (he belongs in “prison for life”), it didn’t last. Relations between the two have thawed, even blossomed, into a warm friendship of convenience. After the near-assassination last summer, Zuckerberg wrote Trump, calling him a “bad ass.” He had dinner recently at Mar-a-Lago and contributed $1 million to the inauguration fund (as did most of the tech moguls.)

In the last two weeks, Zuckerberg demonstrated, in a tone-deaf way, how separated he is from typical human experience. He also displayed horrible judgment as well as the absence of any family, friend, or public relations team to counter that bad judgment.

On January 7, Zuckerberg spoke on camera, giving Trump a lasting and more important gift than money: he explained why Meta (parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) would no longer do any fact checking—leaving it to the crowd (the users) to determine the accuracy of posts. With that move Zuckerberg shirked even the most modest responsibility for the creation and spread of massive misinformation, bullying, and hate speech.

As he was speaking, an eagle-eyed observer noticed the Meta CEO was “sporting” a $900,000 watch. Only a few people on the planet own such watches, and only a few more could recognize them.

Who knew there was such a thing as a $900,000 watch!

The Swiss watch is a Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1. The company only makes two to three of these watches each year, and they sell for $895,000 plus tax. Greubel makes almost all the parts for the watch by hand, which takes many hundreds of hours.

The CEO of Greubel Forsey, Michel Nydegger, seemed to enjoy the new attention. He responded to the publicity of Zuckerberg wearing one of their watches by saying, “It’s a pleasure to see someone who has played such a pivotal role in shaping the modern digital landscape and lifestyle show true appreciation for the most traditional approach to fine watchmaking today.”

As The New York Post pointed out, “Mark Zuckerberg may be a digital pioneer, but on Tuesday he flashed a taste for analog bling.”

In no way am I criticizing Zuckerberg for being massively wealthy or how he spends his money. There is enough of that going around.  The recent glee that some publicly shared when the homes of some of the most affluent Americans burned in the Palisades Fires is repulsive. However, that glee should be a warning sign to Zuckerberg of the disconnect between him and his users.

With a current net worth of over $200 billion, making him the third richest person in the world, he can easily afford the watch or anything else he wants.

I am faulting him for being so tone-deaf—so unaware of how others view him—that he wore it in public while trying to elicit support for a controversial change in policy. I wish it surprised me that his own reflections or the better judgment of someone in the room did not suggest making the announcement without wearing a watch worth more than 90% of the homes in America.

He can buy whatever he wants. He can wear the watch in his bunker rather than in front of reporters.

That’s why I flashed back to The Social Network and to how perfectly Jesse Eisenberg captured the lack of, or interest in, self-awareness.

On January 7, Zuckerberg explained why Meta (parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) would no longer do any fact checking—leaving it to the crowd (the users) to determine the accuracy of posts. With that move Zuckerberg shirked even the most modest responsibility for the creation and spread of massive misinformation, bullying, and hate speech.

When I was growing up, it was the more expensive watches that told accurate time. Bulova’s Accutron at $200 (more than $1,000 today) was more accurate than less expensive watches. That changed with the introduction of the quartz watch.  For the last 40 years, $20 watches tell time as well (and sometimes better, and don’t have to be wound) as their most-expensive cousins.

Of course, in executive suites and in country clubs in Beverly Hills, the Hamptons, and Palm Beach, you see plenty of Rolexes and Patek-Philippe watches worth more than $25,000. They don’t tell better time, but they send a message (one that is more widely recognized than the Greubel). Buyers do believe these timepieces are multi-generational investments that will be passed down and may increase in value.

The line between making a good investment for you and your descendants—and which brings pleasure every time you look at your watch, or get in your car, or put on designer clothes—and flaunting your wealth can get fuzzy.

Eisenberg indeed nailed how a young Zuckerberg was detached and unaware of the messages he sent. At that time, the real Zuckerberg probably didn’t care if he knew. His recent make-over suggests that he now cares at least somewhat about his image. He can do whatever he wants. But if he is beginning to care about that image, he needs friends, advisers, and publicists to guide him: not just on his accessories but also on the impact of his companies.
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Jeffrey Cole is the founder and director of The Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg.

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January 22, 2025