Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed himself “the most well-known person of my generation” in an email with another tech billionaire who was urging him to start a makeover. The millennial Facebook founder made the boast to Peter Thiel in 2020 when Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and Silicon Valley’s longest-standing conservative voice, told him he needed to change his image. The e-mail correspondence came to light when Facebook’s parent company, Meta, was sued by the attorney general of Tennessee, the Washington Post reported .
Thiel wrote to Zuckerberg, then 36, to say, “As the head of the most successful Millennial tech company, it makes more sense for Zuckerberg to present himself as ‘Millennial spokesperson’ rather than Mark as a Baby Boomer construct of how a well-behaved Millennial is supposed to act.” Zuckerberg replied, “Finally, I think there’s also some distinction between me and the company here. This is likely particularly important for how I show up because I’m the most well-known person of my generation.
” Being the most well-known member of his generation would make Zuckerberg more recognizable than Taylor Swift—whose concerts he has attended with is family—Kate Middleton, Lionel Messi and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. He is indisputably richer than any of them, recently becoming only the fourth person ever to be worth more than $200 billion, according to Forbes . The email from Thiel did prompt a radical change in Zuckerberg, Since 2020, the.
