by Ryk Groetchen
Neurodivergent dad of neurodivergent children
Facilitator of musical experiences for families with young children
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,
I have been a user of your platform since soon after it was released to the public in the mid-2000s. I’m older than you: you were born the year I should have graduated from high school. As a neurodivergent person, the school environment was not a safe place for me. That is something else we both share—we’re dropouts. Good for us. We saw that we were not welcome, and we forged ahead in our own way. You were able to leverage your strengths in engineering and systems thinking to create a safe zone for yourself that you could control. This is something that every neurodivergent person longs deeply for—a safe set of variables that allows us to make use of our special interests and accommodate our challenges so that we can live our lives without being reminded every moment that we are different, that we think differently, that we experience things differently—not wrong, just different.
I have also been fortunate in this regard. I stumbled into the world of early childhood music facilitation—something I seem to have been born to do. When I am engaged in music-making activity with families, I don’t think about the fact that I can’t run fast, or play an instrument like a virtuoso, or look at numbers on a page for more than 5 minutes without becoming overwhelmed. I get to engage in an activity that builds on my strengths and special interests, and the social engagement allows me to form relationships with people who are good at the things that I’m not good at. I found a safe environment, like you have.
That being said, I want to bring something to your attention that I witnessed on your platform today. I use the Meta family of products—Facebook, Instagram, Threads—to engage with a community of interested people who might be interested in connecting in the world in the ways that I do. I am grateful that I get to engage free of charge, and I recognize that I might be able to increase engagement by investing in advertising on the platform. I’m given agency, which, as a neurodivergent person, is very important to me, as much of the way that modern society is designed is not with people like us—you and me—in mind.
Today, I saw a feature that I had not seen before—a frame with a title that was not from an obvious account. The title said “US Music Together & Family Music Classes.” The frame contained what appeared to be a post from a company that I used to represent, Music Together LLC. Music Together is a registered trademark (pardon me if I use terminology that is not precisely technically accurate—part of the character of my neurodivergence is that I can understand the spirit of something and paraphrase in a way that erases the meaning for some people. I know that Music Together LLC has the right to operate under that name, and that that right is exclusive).
Even though I no longer represent them, they gave me my start in my career, and I worked in their environments for over 20 years—in rented rooms where families gather to sing, move and play, so that children can learn to socialize in musical ways that align with their human faculties—learning through cooperative play. I am highly engaged in this work, so when I see references online to that organization, my interest is piqued, and I want to know more. I want to see Music Together succeed in their mission, even though I am engaged in the community in a different way currently.
So I clicked on the frame. Behind that click was a kind of alternate feed. The first post was the one that appeared to be from Music Together. But what followed was content that had nothing to do with either Music Together or Family music classes. There was a political cartoon that appeared to be aimed at detractors of the current President. Then there was a political clickbait post that appeared to be directed toward supporters of the current President. Neither of these had anything to do with family music classes or Music Together, as the title of the original frame suggested. There was an infographic about a Chinese company that cools its data centers with sea water, followed by what appeared to be a personal testimonial about the differences between Waldorf and Montessori education. These were followed by a couple of posts that were difficult to parse on first glance, and I was not wanting to investigate further. Finally, there was a button at the bottom that said “Return To Feed.” Suffice it to say that I felt I had experienced a bait-and-switch—a frame that suggested a certain type of content, using a registered trademark, led me to a completely different and unrelated type of content, that appeared to be presented together by the platform itself.
As a neurodivergent person, I find this type of thing deeply unsettling. I appreciate it when content is clearly labeled, and when my sense of expectation is met in a way that helps me learn more about the subject I am exploring. To be taken down a completely different path involves a certain reorganization of my attention, which takes effort, and can be exhausting.
Which led me naturally to the question that arose in my mind—why would a neurodivergent person design a platform that is so hostile to the sensibilities of many neurodivergent people? I say many because I am engaged with a neurodiverse community, and I am a person who advocates for the needs of neurodivergent families. We talk about these things, so I am not simply projecting my own challenges onto an abstract community of people—I’m describing the challenges that my community describes, and articulating them to you, a fellow neurodivergent person, by way of advocacy.
Having asked that question, “why would a neurodivergent person design a platform that is so hostile to many neurodivergent people?” (and I can expound at length on the ways that the Meta family of products are hostile, and indeed, deeply harmful, to many neurodivergent people, who come to these platforms for connection, advice, information, and tools to make life better for themselves and, often, their neurodivergent children), I will refrain from trying to answer it without engaging with you directly. One of the hallmarks of the neurodivergent experience is something I call “systematic misnaming.” In a society that values conformity to standards of behavior, developmental milestones, and the ability to navigate certain types of environments without bringing attention to ourselves, people who think, move, and express themselves differently often are faced with descriptions of ourselves from others who are attempting to make sense of us that don’t align with our insides.
I will offer you the respect that I appreciate from others—which is to not ascribe my own biases to your actions, in the form of pretending to know your intentions and reflecting a picture of yourself that doesn’t align with your own. This kind of misnaming is deeply harmful, and results in relational trauma for many neurodivergent people. Only an individual can really know their own internal architecture, and having it described from outside in ways that don’t reflect what we know about ourselves can lead to depression and burnout, to deep resentment and antisocial sentiments, or even to suicidal ideation.
So, here I am with my question, and that is that. Why would a neurodivergent person design a platform that is so hostile to neurodivergent people at large?
Being neurodivergent, my curiosity often directs my actions, especially when I encounter a roadblock, such as “I can’t answer this question without another person’s consent.” I can’t ascribe intent to your actions, Mark, but my curiosity can lead me to explore other avenues that don’t require your consent, such as “what effect has this person’s actions had in the world, and how does that reflect on their character?” I am writing code. It’s not the code you used to create the Meta family of platforms. It doesn’t travel along the pathways it travels on with the ease with which computer code travels along electronic circuits. The human mind is, for better or worse, not as conductive as copper. Language is code, nonetheless, and the codebase is quite flexible, and is constantly being updated. Understanding neurodivergence as I do, I recognize that I inherited it, and I recognize, Mark, that, being a neurodivergent father yourself, your children might have inherited some of your qualities. They might encounter some of the same challenges that we encountered in the world as neurodivergent people. They might experience bullying, or isolation, or systemic misnaming. You might be able to shelter your children from such experiences, but at some point, they will likely come in contact with a world that was not designed with their needs in mind. I notice that another thing we have in common, Mark, is that we both have distinctive and not-so-common names that have a way of becoming associated with us, and representative of our character. People have often called me Groetchen (pronounced in English like a woman’s name), precisely because in doing so, there is no mistake about who is being addressed. Unless I’m with family, I’m the only Groetchen in the room. I imagine that you experience something similar. And this can get shortened as well (people are predictable, in certain ways). Gretch has also been used as shorthand for my name, and evocative of my character. I recognize that you get called Zuck in the same way.
So, being the curious person that I am, I go in search of clues.
My grandfather died a few months after I was born, so I didn’t get to ask him questions firsthand. But with the advent of the internet, you’d better believe I would ask questions wherever I could. What I found aligned with family lore, but was nonetheless very interesting. Mr. Groetchen was a German immigrant who built quite a formidable presence as a tool and die manufacturer in Chicago in the pre-war years. He manufactured parts for the war effort, but his main enterprise was making gaming devices and kitchen appliances. He rose to the top of his trade, and is cited as a mentor to people in the industry who continued and became giants in their own right. Despite this, he never owned a home, and passed on no generational wealth. I grew up an anonymous person in family circumstances that were vulnerable to changing economic conditions. I struggle to make a living, despite having found a trade that aligns with my gifts. I can’t afford to send my children to college.
And, being a curious person with a distinctive and rather unique name, I naturally wanted to know what the name itself meant. Several years ago I typed “grötchen” (the original, pre-Ellis Island spelling of the family name) into Google Translate. Imagine my surprise that the translation that came back was “dumbass.” I’m not kidding. An old friend who ended up working as a high school teacher in Germany confirmed to me that the kids used the word to represent a laughable person. I was actually kind of delighted. I’m kind of proud to be a dumbass. If a dumbass can find himself in harmony in community with families making music, maybe there’s hope for the world. But, since the codebase of language is always being updated, so are the meanings of the operators and operands it is made of. When I checked today, “grötchen” in Google Translate returned “little ones.” That actually made me cry (something I’ve been doing a lot of lately, as someone who has shifted into grandparent mode). My name actually aligns with my career and my character. For someone like me, that means something.
I notice that you, Mark, have a distinctive surname as well, and since I was Googling my name, I thought it would be fun to do the same with yours. Google Translate is kind to you. It returned “pile of sugar.” Who wouldn’t want to be thought of as a pile of sugar? Blessings to your family, and may your character align with your sweet, good name.
I decided to do a little more digging, curious as I am. My brain recognizes patterns, and I have noticed that your name has been used as a verb. My family has not had the type of influence that results in our name entering the codebase as representative of certain types of action. I didn’t want to put a spin on it, but simply to acknowledge what I noticed and get a generic response from a large language model. To be fair to you, I consulted MetaAI from within Facebook. I asked the question:
“what are some of the ways that “zuckerberg” is being used as a verb in online discourse?”
Here is the response:
The verb has been around since The Social Network era in 2010, and it has split into a few distinct uses:
To zuckerberg / zuckerberging / zuckered someone: to take their idea and claim it as yours
The original meaning. Urban Dictionary defines it as “to steal an idea from someone who trusts you”, “to steal an idea from someone but change it just enough that you can claim it as yours”, or “stealing, using and blatantly denying use of intellectual property”. The extended version: starting a company as a partnership, then eliminating the partner when it gets big.
To get zucked / zuckered: to get conned or burned by Facebook itself
Dictionary.com tracks this as a pun on suckered: “to get tricked by Mark Zuckerberg — or more specifically, by his social media company, Facebook — for either financial gain or at the expense of your personal information”. Early tweets used it like “When you take an idea to a developer and they delay you to build their own version, you’ve been zuckered”. After the 2012 IPO it also meant buying high and watching the stock die.
To get zucced / to be zuccing: to get moderated, banned, or surveilled
This is the current dominant use on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube comments.
– Moderation: “Don’t post that, you’ll get zucced by the algorithm” is the template. “The Zucc” becomes a noun for the moderation system itself.
– Surveillance/data collection: Derived from Zuckerberg’s name, “zucc is now used to describe surveillance, data collection, or being overly controlled”. Example phrasing people use: “my phone is always zuccing me with targeted ads”.
To be out-Zucked: to be turned into the product
A more critical/media studies use: “Facebook converts users into products that can be sold to advertisers. Bingo! You are out-Zucked”. Means your attention and data were captured while you thought you were the customer.
To Zuckerberg yourself (ironic, post-2023): to do a full image rebrand
After the MMA training, chain, baggy tee era, people started using it jokingly for a dramatic personal glow-up: “He Zuckerberged himself from dorky CEO to dripped-out jacked guy.” It’s not in the dictionaries yet, but you’ll see it in memes about transformation and rebranding.
So depending on context, “I got zuckerberged” can mean anywhere from “my co-founder stole my idea” to “Facebook banned my meme page for 30 days” to “my data got harvested.”
Wow. That’s a lot to take in.
As a neurodivergent dad, my mind immediately goes to “my neurodivergent children are going to use my tools to understand me one day.”
Let’s unpack this. Mark, you’ve been really lucky as the rare neurodivergent person to be able to operate within your sphere of competence, which is my name for the environment where my strengths are an asset, and my challenges are accommodated, so that I can function at my best. Again, good for you. Every successful neurodivergent person creates a bridge to others to be able to find success themselves.
But your sphere of competence appears to have a certain character, a character that leads the community to associate your name with, well, should I point out, less than favorable qualities, outside of strict Machiavellian circles. If you indeed have neurodivergent children, regardless of the ways that you may have protected them from the ways of the world, at some point they are going to become curious, as I have, as a typical neurodivergent person, and want to know more about where they come from.
Again, let me point out that I am not ascribing any intent to your actions. But as a fellow neurodivergent person, I recognize that we need to work together, to help offset the blindnesses that we experience; to hip one another to the ways that we are being perceived; to have each other’s backs. Myself, for example—I am hierarchy blind. When I enter a room, there might be a little kid and the president of a company, and I will relate to them the same, to the horror of many in attendance. An ally who has my back will tip me off: “Hey, that dude is kind of important, so you can’t just talk to him like a kid.” I’m down with that, even though it makes no sense to me. Friends look out for one another, and if a friend points out that there’s someone in the room that needs to be communicated with differently, I’m totally down with that. So I’m speaking to you as an ally, and trying to tell you, in the hallway, under my breath, so no one else can hear it, but so that you can use the information to do with as you please: “These people see you as an asshole. Don’t take it personally, but just know that, in case how other people see you, including your children, is important to you.” That’s all I’m trying to do. I’m not judging you. I’m just passing along information, one neurodivergent person to another. We have to look out for one another.
As a person who is hierarchy-blind, I’ve had to work to recognize the influence that people have on their communities. I just meet people face-to-face, and don’t worry about what they bring with them, or what they leave behind. We’re just here, being who we are, and it’s nice to meet you. But allies have helped me to understand that certain ways of being in the world have consequences. I have responded to someone by saying “that’s stupid,” with pure intent, speaking only to the thing being said, unaware that that person might take that as saying that they are stupid. When my allies have pointed this out to me, I found it helpful, and I learned to adjust my codebase so that I can register disagreement in a way that doesn’t disenfranchise the person I am speaking with.
And I bring up disenfranchisement, Mark, because so much of what your MetaAI LLM returned from my query was associations with your name about disenfranchisement. That being said, let’s leave that behind.
Let’s imagine something different.
My understanding is that much of the associations with your name are the direct results of your actions in the world, independent of the intentions behind those actions. To be zuckerberged is to be defrauded, surveiled, erased, bait-and-switched (which brings us back to the original frame that I encountered on your platform that I wanted to bring to your attention).
Let’s consider an alternative reality. I know, from experience, that you are a person who has a soft spot for alternative reality. You proudly showed off your AR goggles, that allowed people to connect in a world of avatars, so I know that’s an area of special interest to you.
Let’s consider an alternative reality where “to zuckerberg” means “to use one’s gifts for engineering and systems thinking to make the world better for neurodivergent children.”
If we’re being fair, I hope you can acknowledge the position of power and influence you have come to inhabit. And the descriptions of your character have come from your use of that power and influence. Good for you. But your children will, hopefully, outlive you. And, if they are neurodivergent like us, they will be curious, and what to know what you are about.
Imagine a world where “to zuckerberg” someone means to make their life better in a meaningful way, where what were once seen as deficits were recognized as strengths.
I am a person who works within a small community of around 50 families. Somehow, my name changed from meaning dumbass to meaning little ones. I can’t claim that my actions resulted in that change, but that change is welcome. As a person who has influence over billions of lives, perhaps you can have an influence on how your name is perceived, to the curious children who will look themselves up in the future. Maybe pile of sugar is a good foundation to build on (certainly better than dumbass).
While we’re talking about this honestly, from neurodivergent dad to neurodivergent dad, I can’t help but point out a couple of other things that are resulting in a negative association with your name. As neurodivergent people, we often have strengths in one area and deficits in another. We often rely on the perspectives of others to navigate in areas that are difficult for us to parse. It has come to my attention that your platform has been deployed to suppress communication in certain areas, and to amplify communication in other areas. Fair enough. But your platform has suppressed information in the area of human response to tyrannical governments, which does not result in greater agency for neurodivergent people such as ourselves. On the contrary, tyrannical governments value conformity—of thought, deed, and intention—which for people like ourselves, marginalizes us, especially when we don’t have the resources that you do to shield ourselves from such demands.
Also, I understand that you would rather move away from the beautiful land of California than pay taxes. As a neurodivergent person, I recognize that it can be difficult to parse the demands of society, and a demand to remit taxes may feel like an attempt to erase you. Again, fair enough. It may be that the people you are surrounding yourself with, who advise you in the areas that don’t come naturally to you, have led you to believe that taxes are tyranny. If that is the case, I am sorry that you have fallen in with such advisors. Though we live in a society that values rape, extraction of value, erasing the enemy, and personal gain, this society is but a tiny blip in the history of human interaction. There are societies where people pool their resources for the benefit of the children who will outlive them and inherit what we have left them. In such a world, taxation is simply a way that we care for our children: my taxes pay for the school that ensures that my child has the tools they will need to navigate their world. Taxes don’t take something from me: they add value to the future that is my legacy. In some cultures, success is not measured by what one gains for themself, but for what one pays forward for future generations.
Maybe you are as hierarchy-blind as I am, or maybe more, to be fair. Even with my hierarchy blindness, I recognize that your actions have a lot of sway, in our current society, and that, with a little bit of shift of priorities, you could have an influence in the world that would be a net positive in the lives of neurodivergent people like ourselves. You could even move your platform, Meta Corporation, in the direction of providing neurodiversity-affirming communication accommodations, that would have a huge impact on the well-being of neurodivergent people, like ourselves, and our children.
Mr. Zuckerberg—Mark, if it’s fair to call you that—you’re a smart person—I recognize you. I hope that I haven’t engaged you in a way that upsets your sensibilities. I recognize that you are straightforward, science-aligned, and don’t waste time with bullshit. I hope it’s ok that I’ve addressed you honestly about the world that our neurodivergent children will inherit. I’m disappointed with the ways that your name has been hijacked by popular culture. Knowing the needs of neurodivergent children, what can we do about that? How Can I support you? How can we move the Zuckerberg name into the realm of history that represents making the world safe for neurodivergent children? I certainly can’t do it by myself.
Thank you for all you make possible in the world,
Ryk Groetchen
Fellow Neurodivergent dad