Well, Well, It Looks Like Mark Zuckerberg’s Wardrobe and Morals Both Got a Lil’ MAGA Rebrand

First, Mark Zuckerberg dropped the “the” from Facebook (it’s cleaner) and we said nothing—partly because he was a college student and most of the world didn’t know about the social networking startup. Then, he ditched the signature dark gray Brunello Cucinelli t-shirt he’d adopted as a daily uniform (an update on his earlier go-to of zip-up hoodie and flip-flops) and started wearing chains and posting shirtless UFC thirst traps, and we said nothing. Now, Zuckerberg has pledged $1 million from Meta to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund and announced that Facebook is going to ditch its fact-checking program and rely on community members to police one another, a technique that, wow, has really not worked out well in the past. It’s long past time to say something.

Zuckerberg’s transformation, both inner and outer, appears to be complete. Tech schlub be gone: Mark’s a MAGA Guy now.

What happened to the guy who, at a Facebook town hall event in 2014, explained that he wore the same thing every day because, “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.” He said that small decisions like choosing an outfit, for example, “kind of make you tired and consume your energy. And my view is, I’m in this really lucky position where I get to wake up every day and help serve more than a billion people. I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life.”

Things can change in a decade, sure, but there does appear to be more than a shred of truth that the yassification of Mark Zuckerberg—including designing a t-shirt collab that likens himself to his own No. 1 favorite boy, Julius Caesar, and wearing a $900,000 watch to announce abandoning any sort of commitment to, you know, the truth—has corresponded with him finding it in himself to care a little more about the so-called silly and frivolous, and much less about that community he so badly wanted to serve.

Yes, Zuck has grown out his Caesar of the Valley haircut and gotten a little bit of color to his face, but his glow-up has been paired with attempts to seize yet more personal power and fashion himself into a sort of tech emperor, including making moves to get into the good graces of a powerful ally like Trump, bound for the White House in just a few weeks. Now feels like a good time to remember that just a few months ago, Trump wrote in his latest coffee table book (they can’t all be tweets, folks) that Zuckerberg had been plotting against him and that he nurtured a fond little dream of making the founder “spend the rest of his life in prison.”

Zuckerberg, in response, gave him a cool mill (you know what’s really cool?), a private demo of his neato AR glasses over dinner at Mar-a-Lago, and announced major changes to a Facebook policy that had been implemented in large part after it was found that false information shared on the platform, as well as a lax ad policy, played a significant role in Trump being elected to his first spin ‘round the White House. Oh, and that community Zuck once prized? In the name of “restoring free expression on our platforms,” as he characterized the policy changes, hate speech restrictions will also be relaxed. Women can be referred to as “property,” gay people as “mentally ill,” transgender people as “it,” and more. You’re welcome, valued community!

The announcement of the changes harkens the dawn of a “community notes” model to contextualize information, similar to what Zuckerberg’s buddy Elon Musk has implemented on X. You remember X, the social media platform so friendly and non-toxic that users are abandoning it in droves for BlueSky and crossing their fingers that that one doesn’t explode too? Yes, it’s going great over there at X, really something to aspire to.

Musk is a certified Trump bestie these days, with a task force and a Floridian guest room all of his own. In Zuckerberg’s Mar-a-Lago monogrammed pillow dreams. Remember when Zuckerberg and Musk were going to have a cage match? It was all cage match this and cage match that, and yet, no cage match. Only tweets and more nipple than anyone asked for. I don’t want to say what I’m disappointed about, but isn’t the world just so disappointing sometimes?

It’s not all burnt offerings at the altar of Trump and building Pinterest boards for new and exciting chain inspiration. No, he’s still doing the tech stuff too, you know? His latest breakthrough: Integrating Shazam, an app that does with a standalone program and several steps what any iPhone’s default menu can do with one touch and tell you what the hell song is playing, into his Ray-Ban Meta AR glasses. You know, so you can look cool while going “ooooh, I thought that sounded like Dua Lipa!”

Free speech is a thing again now, thanks to Facebook, so you’re allowed to say that. And Zuckerberg is a Fashion Guy now too (peep those gigantic lapels, lapelus gigante in the original Latin), so, yeah, this should definitely take priority over teaching Aunt Joan that pasting a paragraph onto her news feed about how she is above the law does not, in fact, make her above the law.

Anyway, on to what’s really important here: What do we think Zuck is going to wear to Trump’s inauguration? Bet it’ll be cute.