Statistics tell us that 70% of all senior executives are alpha male, so I’d thought we had enough “masculine energy.” Mark Zuckerberg disagrees. 

In a recent podcast, he called businesses to dial up “masculine energy.” 

 It’s like you want like feminine energy, you want masculine energy. Like I, I think that that’s like you’re gonna have parts of society that have more of one or the other. I think that that’s all good. 

But, but I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung towards being this somewhat more neutered thing. And I didn’t really feel that until I got involved in martial arts, which I think is still a more, much more masculine culture.

[…] Like, well that’s how you become successful at martial arts. You have to be at least somewhat aggressive. 

Why? Because he’s not talking about others. He’s telling us about himself unleashing his “masculine energy”. For example, 

• Revamping his clothes and demeanour — from looking like a perennial geeky student to a cool billionaire tech millennial.
• Embracing far-right politics — check the inauguration picture where his second row with “chums” Musk, Bezos, and Pichai. 
• Stopping faking playing nice — He got rid of fact-checkers and told Meta’s 3 billion users that was their job, not his.

Moreover, he’s a more “palatable” version of Elon — equally successful, not so toxic, and has undergone a very public appearance Meta-morphosis —which makes him dangerously appealing to young men… And maybe to women too. After all, he has three daughters and no sons. 

Given his extreme financial success and now closeness to political power, I pondered 

What would it take for me to unleash my “masculine energy”?

And I came up with 10 precepts.

1.- Recycle

The first iteration of Facebook was “Facemash” — a website Zuckerberg created whilst studying at Harvard — to evaluate the attractiveness of female students. Users were presented with pairs of photos of female students and asked to vote who was hotter.

The kick? The photos were stolen.

The students were unaware their images were being used for this rating, judging by the complaint from Fuerza Latina and the Harvard Association of Black Women. The site used ID photos of female undergraduates taken without permission from the university’s online directories. 

This “repurposing” of data would become a hallmark of Facebook (see Cambridge Analytica later).

2- Steal

In 2008, the Winklevoss brothers, Harvard contemporaries of Zuckerberg, reached a $65m (£41m) settlement with Facebook.

They claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea after they hired him to code their ConnectU site in 2003. FB always denied the claims but wanted to end a “rancorous litigation”.

3.- Conceal

On March 17, 2018, the Observer revealed that 50 million Facebook profiles had been harvested for Cambridge Analytica in a major data breach.

Facebook learned about the issue in 2015 but didn’t alert the users and “took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information”.

4.- Pseudo-apologise

Once the Cambridge Analytical scandal exploded, it took Zuckerberg 5 long days to resurface.

On March 21, 2018, Zuckerberg wrote a Facebook post of almost 1,000 words. The only sentence that hints at an apology is

We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. 

And

This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it.

All the rest was his summary of facts and the steps Facebook was going to take to remediate the issue.

The next day, Zuck told CNN in an interview

I’m really sorry that this happened

Of course, by then he was already a pro of getting away with excuses. His apologies to the Harvard Administrative Board got him out of the Facemash mess mentioned above and allowed him to continue attending school.

5.- Procrastinate

Facebook’s negligence facilitated the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Their algorithms amplified hate speech and the platform failed to take down inflammatory posts.

In 2018, Facebook admitted that it had not done “enough” to prevent the incitement of violence and hate speech against the Rohingya.

6.- Self-regulate

Facebook’s original motto “Move fast and break things” is a declaration of intentions. 

Permission to destroy. No matter the consequences. For one’s benefit.

7.- Manipulate

In 2021, whistleblower Frances Haugen said in congressional testimony that Facebook

• Knew its systems led teenagers to anorexia-related content.
• Intentionally targeted teenagers and children under 13.
• Zuckerberg had been given “soft options” to make the Facebook platform less viral in countries prone to violence but declined to take them because it might affect “meaningful social interactions”.

8.- Rule

Zuckerberg is Meta’s largest shareholder by far. He’s been the company’s longtime chair and chief executive officer.

In addition, not all shares are equal. Meta has a dual class structure. Shares of class A represent one vote per share. The class B stock represents 10 votes per share.

On February 29, 2024, he held approximately 958,000 shares of Class A and 346.05 million shares of Class B with over 61% voting power.

Ave, Cesar.

9.- Deflect

Sheryl Sandberg was the business genius that made Facebook profitable. She made Meta the empire is today thanks to ads. Before she joined, the company was focused on building a “really cool site” and assumed profits just would follow. 

She left in 2022 after 14 years as COO, so one may think that some loyalty was to be expected. Not when the stakes are high.

When late last year Zuckerberg met Stephen Miller — Trump’s choice for White House deputy chief of staff for policy — at Mar-a-Lago, Zuck threw Sandberg under the bus

Mr. Zuckerberg blamed his former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, for an inclusivity initiative at Facebook that encouraged employees’ self-expression in the workplace.

10.- Embody Tech Bro Culture

Talking about diversity and inclusion in tech, I should endeavour to implement this “masculine energy” in my communication style

• Hepeating: Stealing others’ ideas and taking credit for them.
• Mansplaining: Patronising colleagues with more expertise than me so I can show them I’m smarter.
• Promoting manels: Let’s make each conference a “Last Supper” experience.
• Maninterruption: Unnecessarily interrupting others to show them that I think they’re wasting my time.
• Weaponised incompetence: Remembering to claim incompetence when I have a task to do that won’t help my career progression (or I don’t want to do). Instead, I’ll deflect to somebody else telling them they are “naturally good at it”.
• Overconfidence: If you cannot convince them, confuse them. I need to rely more on my sense of entitlement and less on my competence.

The Future Is Bright

Recent history is already showing us the benefits of Zuckerberg’s “masculine energy” 

• The dot-com bubble
• The subprime mortgage crisis
• The cryptocurrency repeat crashes
• The Cambridge Analytical scandal

What’s not to like?

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