Over the past few years Mark Zuckerberg has been conducting a very expensive experiment. If he grows his hair and revamps his wardrobe, will it make him seem more relatable? If he takes up mixed martial arts, goes wild boar hunting, and tells manosphere-adjacent podcasters such as Joe Rogan that companies need more “masculine energy”, will red-blooded American males respect him? With the help of a small army of stylists, personal trainers and PR gurus, could Zuck transform himself from an unlikable dork into an alpha bro?
For a brief moment, the answer to all that seemed to be a tentative “yes”. Zuck’s shock of shaggy new hair made the billionaire seem less like three Lego figures in a trenchcoat and more like an adult human male. His gold chains and jazzy new outfits sparked excited chatter of a “Zucknaissance”. The Meta billionaire also had a lucky break, PR-wise, in 2023 when Elon Musk, the world’s least self-aware man, challenged him to a cage brawl. Cue a flurry of articles about how Zuck was actually a skilled athlete who would annihilate Musk in a fight, leaving approximately 950 children without their father.
