The internet is full of dicks (hecklerspray excluded, of course). Just take a look around: there’s that kid over there, blogging about his pathetic existence; that tweeting celebrity, moaning about their insufferable riches; and what about Justin Bieber? Ergh.

The internet is a horrible cesspit of words and pictures, never more aptly demonstrated than in social hub Facebook.

It’s also appropriate then that the story behind the invention of the 21^st Century’s most dominating stalker tool, The Social Network, is as full of nauseating idiots as its millions of inhabitants.

Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is rich. This is a fact that he lets us know almost immediately as the non-linear nature of the film flitters to the Facebook creator’s later court cases surrounding the site. Yet, his ascension from mumbling genius to curly-haired billionaire isn’t about the money; it’s about notoriety.

It’s an interesting contrast to the virtual, faceless nature of electronic communication that Zuckerberg’s fascination with gaining access to exclusive university clubs and his reputation are the only measures of success he requires.

However, it’s not always Mark at the centre of the drama.

Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), open wallet to Zuckerberg at Facebook’s inception, feels as if he’s being pushed out of the business he helped to build, when Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake – proving his acting chops) enters the frame. Parker, co-creator of Napster, is everything Zuckerberg wants to be: effortlessly hip, attractive and the inventor of technology that changed how we live our life – he’s probably got a big penis as well. Clearly, he’s important.

However, this isn’t just a simple tale on Facebook’s invention. While Saverin sues Mark for his mistreatment, frat-boy rich kids, the Winklevoss twins and their cohort, Divya Narendra, also jump on the legal bandwagon, suing Zuckerberg claiming to be the originators of Facebook. Nothing is clear-cut, as the film doesn’t concern itself with taking sides, instead allowing for each performance to speak for itself.

Eisenberg and Garfield are the standouts, with the former latching onto quirks, quick witticisms and vomiting intellectual babble with impressive momentum. Praise also has to be shouldered on the insufferably likeable Timberlake and the impressively named Armie Hammer, the latter playing both twins with some cunning technological wizardry.

Director David Fincher has a masterful handle on the storytelling, jumping between the early days of Facebook and the ensuing court cases. It’s all helped by a fantastic script by Aaron Sorkin, former West Wing scribe, here transferring his talents onto a story people in the UK give a shit about. He takes his time to make each character resonate and sympathetic in each of their own struggles.

The Social Network is one of the finest contemporary dramas ever and will probably get marked as one of the defining films of the generation. It might even frighten some people to know that it’s not even about Facebook at all but a story about interaction. Friendship, romance, business, they’re all analysed through the invention of that cursed online portal.

It doesn’t matter whose side you’re on by the movie’s end, what you’ll walk away with in one of the most brilliantly told true stories of today.

If you don’t like it, we’re going to unfriend you.

‘spray rating: 5/5

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Like many people, we spend half our bloody lives on Facebook being all like “Oho, look, Ian’s updated his status to ‘Ian doesn’t understand’! Gosh!”

But that doesn’t mean that we want to see a Facebook movie ever. Ever ever ever ever ever. Which is a pain in the bum because Aaron Sorkin, the brain behind The West Wing and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, is only going to jolly well write one, isn’t he?

Not to be outdone, MySpace has also decided to make a movie – except that’ll be made by Uwe Boll off his chops on cattle tranquiliser, trapped in a kaleidoscope factory and given a budget of 50p and a cast of nearly-naked women whose dialogue only consists of the line “HEY! Want to get LAID Tonite?” repeated every three seconds until blood starts to trickle out of your face.

So yes, as we were saying – we dawdle around on Facebook for hours at a time, but that doesn’t mean Facebook deserves to be turned into a film. We also had food poisoning fairly recently and spent hours hunched over a toilet vomiting up six days’ worth of food, but that doesn’t mean someone should make a film poking around in the still-warm contents of our upset stomach with a stick, does it? Does it?

No. But try telling that to Aaron Sorkin, the man who recently made a TV series about a comedy show that committed the dual crimes of a) not featuring any jokes and b) going all boggle-eyed at Sting like a soggy-knickered schoolgirl every chance it got.

Aaron Sorkin’s writing a film about Facebook, you see.

Why? God knows why. Presumably a cigar-twiddling executive at Sony saw his niece send all her friends a FunWall post of a monkey farting in a cat’s eye and decided that all kids everywhere would definitely watch a Facebook movie, perhaps while imagining the lucrative merchandising possibilities of Facebook action figures, Facebook lunchboxes and Facebook: The Educational Preteen Cartoon Series.

Either way, the only way that Aaron Sorkin could research this Facebook movie of his was to go onto Facebook and start a Facebook account of his own. The BBC can take it from here:

“I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I’ve started this page,” he wrote. “This is me,” he insisted. “I don’t know how I can prove that but feel free to test me.” The 47-year-old admitted he did not really understand Facebook, or “how I’m going to write the movie”, so was relying on fans to help him. “I honestly don’t know how this works, which is why I’m here,” Sorkin said.

At the moment the jist of the Facebook movie seems to be about the creation of Facebook rather than Facebook itself, which is great because it’s basically going to be There Will Be Blood except about a bunch of awkward geeks who we hate because they’re all far richcer than we’ll ever be.

So that’s it. All we have to do now is sit and wait for this Aaron Sorkin Facebook movie to be released so we can slag it off before we’ve even seen it and then make a hilarious joke about how we’re waiting for the sequels, which are rumoured to include:

*Facebook: Our Mutual Friend (Is That Weirdo From School Who Nobody Ever Spoke To)

*Facebook: Jeremy Has Thrown A Sheep At Robert LOL

*Facebook: The Empire Pokes Back

Our sides. Seriously.