If there’s one thing my years of media consumption have taught me, it’s how to spot when a profile is a hit job in disguise. The clues are often right there in the first sentence, as is the case with today’s New York Times profile of Randi Zuckerberg, most famous for being Mark Zuckerberg’s sister. It goes…
“WHO wants a tequila shot?” Randi Zuckerberg shouted over the thump of “Baby One More Time,” Britney Spears’s breakup anthem.
The message putting this as the positively cringe-worthy piece’s lede lead conveys/translates to is something along the lines of, “This is obviously a person not to be taken seriously.” It’s just so hilariously passive-aggressive.
And then, deeper into the article was this…
(Mark) Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed for this article even after his sister sent him an e-mail asking him to. Ms. Zuckerberg said she got an e-mail from the company’s spokesman, Elliot Schrage, in reply. In a statement issued through Mr. Schrage, her brother said, in part: “Randi has always been creative and we put her talent to good use at Facebook.” He added, “Now that she’s on her own stage, I know she’ll be recognized even more for making the world more open and connected.”
Roughly translated, this screams: “OMG SHE COULDN’T EVEN CONVINCE HER BILLIONAIRE BROTHER WHO MADE HER RICH AND FAMOUS TO SAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT HER IN HER GODDAMN NEW YORK TIMES PROFILE!!!”
A few of my other favorite bits of the article include…
“This is the launch party of Randi Zuckerberg!” she said at the club, beaming.
“Every article written about me now refers to me as Randi Zuckerberg, Mark’s sister,” she said. “Maybe one day that won’t be what people say about me.”
Ms. Zuckerberg, who lives in a rented house in Palo Alto, Calif., has ambitions beyond the Internet. “I want a talk show,” she said two days earlier over drinks at the Mercer Hotel. She also wants to sing on Broadway. And she is interested in philanthropy.
So my takeaway from all of this is that Randi — who recently left her job at Facebook to start her own social media company — is sort of clueless and twatty. But I think we already knew that by the fact that she’s besties with Julia Allison, right?
Also, no.