Mark Zuckerberg is revamping his public image with new threads. With a trio of bold t-shirts worn in recent appearances, he is communicating that he came, he saw, he conquered and he will win again at any cost. The attacks can be sickening, but we would do well to be careful.
During a live podcast interview in a packed auditorium last week, Meta’s CEO wore a black, dropped-shoulder shirt that read “pathei mathos,” which in Greek means “learning through suffering.” At his 40th birthday party in May, he wore a black T-shirt with the slogan “Carthago delenda est,” which translates from Latin to “Carthage must be destroyed.” He wore a black T-shirt with black text that read “Aut Zuck aut nihil” during the Meta’s Connect product demo on Wednesday.
The sentences together show him going through a condensed evolution of the politics of antiquity. First, the ancient Greeks, then the early days of Rome as a republic, and finally the full, ruthless glory of the Roman empire.
We need not dwell long on the first motto, as it only induces mocking anger. Has the head of the world’s largest social network, a Harvard-educated man worth $196 billion, suffered? Aeschylus, the father of tragedy who coined the phrase in the 5th century BC, does not seem wise. Perhaps Zuckerberg has endured the attacks and arrows of the scandalous press when he criticized Facebook for fueling ethnic cleansing and the Capitol riots. Its recent $10 billion metaverse ambitions have failed and it has pivoted to AI along with the rest of the tech world. That must have hurt. But of the options be either not to be Meta’s CEO has stayed the course.
The second phrase, “Carthago delenda est”, comes from the Roman Senate. Cato the Elder, Roman senator and historian from around 200 BC. C., repeated it at the end of each speech he gave there. After two wars with Rome, Carthage, located in modern-day Tunisia, was for Cato the sworn enemy of the city. Although few considered him a threat, he pushed for a final showdown. He got his war; Rome crushed Carthage in 146 BC
The motto connotes a fixation on monomania. Zuckerberg is locked up. It is communicating to both its rivals and its investors that it will do anything to crush its competition: wholesale copy Snapchat’s Instagram story format or TikTok’s Reels; buy the world’s most popular texting system, WhatsApp, for $19 billion; remove Apple from the market for virtual and augmented reality devices. It tells users: you will use your personal data as you see fit.
That Zuckerberg is like this is well known. Cruelty is his main public personality trait. What’s different now is the arrogance and the ease with which he uses it. It looks great, to be frank.
The CEO created the Carthage t-shirt in collaboration with designer Mike Amiri, a disruptive and successful American like Zuckerberg himself. Its boxy cut looked less like a Roman toga than a wrestler’s practice suit, something the executive himself aspires to be with his hobby of training mixed martial arts. The aesthetic of a baggy shirt and chain is aimed at young people, although the old-fashioned phrases would seem to appeal to an older audience. Either way, it’s a far cry from the navy zip-up hoodies and fitted gray shirts of his early Facebook days, a non-style remembered for its lack of style or individuality. It seemed then that Zuckerberg’s focus was on the code, not the body. Now the CEO of Meta is taking up space as himself. He has denied having hired a stylist, making the brand change his own.
Zuckerberg’s image renewal, as harsh as it may be, has worked. The public has noticed that this is not the same android that testified before the Senate with microbangs. She grew her curly hair to TikToker length and began wearing a chain regularly, an element of her style that A/B Tested product manager style. The internet thinks he’s almost trendy: An image of him doctored to look a little more like a Drake-impersonating TikToker went viral earlier this year. Faced with the ultra-online mania of the bland Elon Musk, Zuckerberg seems approachable.
The third Latin motto seen on Zuckerberg’s chest, “Aut Zuck aut nihil,” translates to “O Zuck or nothing,” a play on “Either Caesar or nothing.” According ReutersScholars associate two Caesars with the phrase: the Roman dictator Julius Caesar, who may have said it, and Cardinal Caesar Borgia, who said Julius said it. “Caesar” can refer to the men themselves and their exploits: Borgia’s ruthless quest for power inspired Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince. The connotation of the motto: a win-at-all-costs mentality, an intolerance of dissent, and absolute, unbreakable power. Zuckerberg is cultivating an air of rising powerfully above the fray, timeless like emperors. He is, for himself, the architect of a digital civilization as enduring as Rome.
Meta’s corporate governance has always considered Zuckerberg as the supreme leader: he owns only 13% of Meta’s shares but controls more than 50% of the total voting power. With it, he exercises complete and incontrovertible veto power.
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The structure of Wednesday’s performance makes a similar statement, one reminiscent of French King Louis XIV’s “L’État, c’est moi.” Zuckerberg remained on stage for the full two hours of the demonstration, and it was he alone who unveiled Meta’s newest product, still in development but clearly close to its innovative heart: Orion, an advanced pair of augmented reality glasses. . He is Meta; Goal is him.
There is a third Caesar not associated with Zuck’s motto who nevertheless comes to mind: Augustus, who founded the Roman Empire as such when he took the name Caesar and rose to emperor in 27 BC. He conquered Egypt, other parts of North Africa and most of Europe. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, spent their honeymoon in Rome (Chan joked that Zuckerberg took more photos of statues of Augustus than of her) and named their second daughter August. Zuckerberg said the new yorker in 2018: “Basically, through a really tough approach, Augustus established two hundred years of world peace.”
There are pedestrian reasons for Zuckerberg’s stylistic shift. His company’s latest hardware product, the awkwardly named Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, is a hit. Meta has also partnered with major fashion houses such as Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne to license clothing for digital avatars. For commercial reasons it cannot seem out of fashion.
Zuckerberg’s string of wins has also driven Meta’s stock to an all-time high. It is an auspicious moment for a CEO to declare himself god-emperor, the embodiment of the empire without which there is nothing. In 2018, as Facebook endured criticism for allowing fake news and election interference, his company had a “war room” to combat hate speech and misinformation. The command center failed to stop the cruelty of Facebook users and was then dissolved. Move fast, break things, as Zuckerberg himself has said many times. We would do well to keep in mind that Meta’s CEO, with destruction already in his wake, is telling us that he cares little about the consequences as long as the victory is his, however that may look.
