Badlands Story Hour Ep. 105: The Social Network – Tech Gods, CIA Fronts, and the Facebook Psyop

Burning Bright and Chris Paul break down The Social Network - a film that seemed like a simple biopic in 2010 but, through an awakened lens, looks more like a propaganda masterpiece. The guys unpack how the movie rewrote the history of Facebook, omitting the platform’s intelligence ties, the DARPA Lifelog connection, and the real forces backing Mark Zuckerberg.

They dig into Peter Thiel’s role in the tech empire, how Silicon Valley has always been a tool of the intelligence community, and why Facebook’s real power wasn’t in coding, it was in controlling human behavior. From the way social media exploits dopamine to its roots in data mining and surveillance, the guys expose how this so-called “accidental empire” was always meant to reshape society.

Was Zuckerberg a tech genius or just a front man for a much bigger operation? Why was the film written to portray him as a misunderstood, awkward hero instead of a power-hungry data hoarder? And how does Facebook’s original mission of college hookup culture tie into the broader plan for mass manipulation?

The real Social Network isn’t what Hollywood told you.