Tough guy instead of pale nerd: Why Mark Zuckerberg suddenly wants to be a cage fighter

image change
Tough guy instead of pale nerd: Why Mark Zuckerberg suddenly wants to be a cage fighter

Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk arranging a cage fight didn’t come out of nowhere. The colorless meta boss has been working on an image change for a long time. His role model is the Twitter boss, of all people.

Hardly any company boss is as closely associated with his brand as Mark Zuckerberg is with Facebook. No wonder – after all, he is the last of the really big Internet founders who still runs his shop himself. But Zuckerberg has a problem: The aging Facebook just hasn’t been cool anymore. Now he wants to turn things around – by changing his own image.

This emerges from discussions conducted by the “Washington Post” with Zuckerberg’s close environment. Accordingly, they have been working for several years to turn the image of the Facebook founder inside out. According to an insider, these efforts have been significantly increased over the past year. The goal: to reach the audience that is addressed by Elon Musk and his appearance on the internet and offline.

Image makeover

That shouldn’t be a coincidence. Musk differs from Zuckerberg in many ways, and since the Twitter takeover, the two have also been direct competitors. While Musk is extremely confident in voicing his opinions in interviews or on Twitter, Zuckerberg, who is much calmer in comparison, is perceived as somewhat strange. Because he often appears extremely composed in interviews, the web is teeming with jokes comparing him to the Star Trek android Data. Apparently that’s affecting him. “Mark doesn’t feel respected,” says economics professor Bhaskar Chakravorti of Tuft’s elite university.

In recent years he has repeatedly tried to become more approachable with barbecue videos, at Independence Day 2021 he showed himself with a flag on a motorized surfboard. These efforts, too, were met with much derision. Unlike Musk or Apple founder Steve Jobs, the meta boss has few real fans. He’s just not considered cool. The film “The Social Network”, in which Zuckerberg is portrayed as a passionate but rather cranky nerd, is unlikely to have helped the image.

With the new, edgier image, Zuckerberg apparently wants to change that. With visits to the podcasts by Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman, popular with Musk fans, and videos showing him sweating while doing martial arts, Zuckerberg wants to appeal to the “tech bros” who have been supporting Musk. Zuckerberg posts pictures of his jiu-jitsu fights on Instagram, showing himself completing the “Murph Challenge,” an extreme fitness challenge. The clear message: Look, I’m not a pale nerd. But a tough guy.

The boss as figurehead

Attempts to use Zuckerberg himself as the company’s figurehead have been around for a number of years. The founder himself appeared more and more often to announce new directions or products. When the company announced that it would concentrate fully on the virtual reality of the so-called Metaverse in the future and even changed the company name from Facebook to Meta, “Zuck” was also on the stage. But the enthusiasm of the audience remained.

With the image change, Zuckerberg is now trying to do what his competitor on Twitter has done, according to insiders. Despite Musk’s constant provocations, uncontrollable rhetoric, and announcement after extremely unpopular measure, Twitter usage has only increased since his takeover. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, has mainly experienced headwinds in recent years. Its Facebook and Instagram networks are suffering from the growing pressure from competitors like Tiktok, the advertising business that is so important for the company has shrunk significantly with rising inflation.

Liberation in the cage

And even on Facebook itself, his status is currently not the best. After the group laid off tens of thousands of employees and Zuckerberg’s vision of the Metaverse has so far cost more money than it brings in, the boss has to endure internal headwinds unusually often and violently.

The fight against Musk could seem like an opportunity for liberation. While the Twitter boss has a big mouth and has to refer to his “hardcore fights” of his youth in the streets of South Africa, Zuckerberg can show very concrete martial arts successes in recent months. Confronting the cheeky Musk in the ring would then be the ultimate opportunity for him to publicly put the opponent in his place. And maybe also to polish up the image of his company.

Sources:Washington Post, New York Times