Why, Mark?

Swift Boated

Mark Zuckerberg, for some reason, has decided to brag about dashing his seven-year-old daughter’s dreams as some sort of podcast parable.

When speaking to the “Acquired” business podcast, the 40-year-old tech mogul and apparent Swiftie offered what he clearly thought were sage words of wisdom for aspiring entrepreneurs during the recently-taped talk.

“One day, my daughter [August] — we took her to a Taylor Swift concert and she was like, ‘You know Dad, I kind of want to be like Taylor Swift when I grow up,” the Facebook founder told the podcast’s hosts, David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert, and their assembled live audience. “I was like, ‘But you can’t. That’s not available to you.'”

At this point, Zuckerberg looked to the crowd while both hosts laughed along. The camera panned to the audience, which was also seen chuckling, some perhaps out of confusion.

“And she thought about it and she’s like, ‘Alright when I grow up I want people to want to be like August Chan Zuckerberg,'” he concluded. “And I was like, ‘Hell yeah. Hell yeah!'”

Regression to the Mean

Meant to illustrate the ways go-getters should “learn from other people’s successes and failures,” as Zuckerberg continued, the strange anecdote involving a billionaire telling his seven-year-old daughter she can’t be a pop singer seems pretty harsh.

Charitably, the Meta CEO was likely trying to tell August, the middle of his three daughters with wife Priscilla Chan, that she shouldn’t try to be like anyone but herself.

But there’s something unquestionably heartless about telling a young child that she can’t be like her idol.

And what does it say about Zuckerberg’s parental expectations? Does he want his kids to be bigger than one of the most legendary and highest-selling musicians in history who is herself a billionaire? Does he want to protect them from the ravages of racism and fetishization? Does he, like many well-grounded people, simply not want his kids to go into show business?

We’ve reached out to Meta for clarification on all those questions, but until we find out, we’ll have to leave this one open-ended — and once again be forced to wonder why Zuckerberg insists on being so bizarre.