Mark Zuckerberg surfing to the tune of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” American flag in hand, is perhaps the oddest bit of news from the tech world this week.

The Facebook CEO posted the said video on Sunday, July 4, in celebration of the US Independence Day. Unsurprisingly, it attracted a fair bit of criticism ranging from Zuckerberg not being wholly patriotic during earlier efforts to penetrate the Chinese market to billionaire inequality and his platform’s subversion of truth and democracy.

Of course, in his own echo chamber, namely the comments thread on his video post, there are those applauding the watery stunt. 

Prior to this week, there had already been some added resentment over Zuckerberg and the company as a US judge rejected antitrust complaints, causing stocks to rise by more than 4% at the time, and pushing Facebook’s value to $1 trillion. It joined Saudi Arabian oil company Saudi Aramco and four other tech giants in the trillion-dollar club: Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Google parent Alphabet. 

The news laid out the perfect base notes for the wave of mockery that was about to befall the Facebook boss.

While the stunt could’ve been an attempt by Zuckerberg’s PR team to make the executive appeal more to the meme-loving generation, there’s a sense that Facebook has not done enough to fix the big issues that would make Zuckerberg’s stunts silly rather than tone-deaf. 

Or maybe this is just a tradition now for Mark Zuckerberg who, last July, also found himself being circulated in memes. 

Zuckerberg was surfing in Hawaii last year using a $12,000 electric Efoil surfboard (the same type he was using in the patriotic surfing video) with professional surfer Kai Lenny. When the photo first circulated, it appeared like Zuckerberg had just accidentally put too much sunscreen on his face, leading to memes comparing him to clowns and the Joker. 

Later in April 2021, the executive would reveal that he was trying to escape being photographed by the paparazzi in a move that completely backfired. Reactions to the photo then were less critical compared to the video, perhaps because it wasn’t planned out, and he was, front and center, the butt of the joke. 

In any case, we can’t wait what July 2022 will bring, and whether Facebook can do enough this year to get people laughing with Zuckerberg instead of at him. The tide can turn but only if it can prove to be more pro-people and pro-democracy than pro-profit. – Rappler.com