Three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg’s big day was a flop. At his company’s annual developer conference – then called Facebook Connect – he unveiled his grand plans to turn his trillion dollar social network into “a metaverse company.” He changed the name of his company to Meta, and we braced for a world where we would become one with our virtual avatars, who could maybe even one day have legs. And yet, that seismic shift never happened.
For the most part, the metaverse was smoke and mirrors. His company’s stock plummeted, and for the first time ever, Facebook wasn’t growing. Then, Meta conducted several rounds of mass layoffs. It seemed like the fall of an empire, but Zuckerberg managed to reverse the fate of his sinking ship. In calls with concerned investors, he stopped using the word “metaverse,” and when the AI boom came around, he was thrilled to pivot to a new buzzword. The stocks went up.
As his company recovered from crisis, Zuckerberg had a glow-up himself – now, he has become something of a fashionista.
While he used to be known for looking like a ghost in front of the Senate and awkwardly professing his love for barbecue sauce, he has an unexpected hint of swagger now. But he isn’t just wearing Alexander McQueen suits, training with top MMA fighters, and calling it a day. Now, he’s making his own clothes with fashion designer Mike Amiri. So when Zuckerberg strolled on stage at this year’s Meta Connect event – three years after the metaverse fiasco – his outfit mattered.
At what might be Meta’s most impressive developer keynote ever, Zuckerberg wore a structured black tee and jeans, a classic look for Silicon Valley founders who want to make us feel like they’re one of us (except that they’re powerful billionaires). But upon closer inspection, his shirt makes a bold declaration: Aut Zuck aut nihil.
The letters stretch across the sleeves and chest in a way that’s on trend, yet hard to read, especially if you’re not familiar with the ancient Latin declarations of Roman emperors. The original phrase, aut Caesar aut nihil, translates to “either Caesar or nothing.” It’s an expression of the desire to become a supreme ruler at any cost.
“I started working with people to design some of my own clothes,” he said on the Acquired podcast. “I figured, you know, look, we’re going to design eyewear, we’re going to design other stuff that people wear — let’s get good at this.”
These t-shirts are part of a series he designed for himself, which are based on his favorite classical sayings. Another of his shirts is emblazoned with the ancient Greek phrase pathei mathos, which means “learning through suffering.” In May, he wore a shirt with the phrase Carthago delenda est to his 40th birthday party, which means, “Carthage must die,” a call for Rome to attack Carthage during the Punic Wars. He also used the phrase in 2011, when Google launched the would-be Facebook-killer Google+. It’s a variation on the same theme: Zuckerberg still thinks he’s fighting the system, not that he is that system.
The messages Zuckerberg conveys through his attire are deliberate. But what’s a Harvard dropout to the ancient Roman general who established one of history’s most formidable empires?
Comparing himself to Julius Caesar is cocky, but to be fair, Zuckerberg runs a company whose products touch billions of people every day. His reach transcends that of Julius Caesar. And, if all goes according to his plans, he’ll be building wearable AI gadgets and virtual reality headsets that change how the world communicates, once again.
No matter how big Meta has become, Zuckerberg’s outfits reveal that he still imagines himself as an antagonist to more established tech companies. In these comparisons, Zuckerberg isn’t Caesar, the established emperor – he thinks of himself as the earlier Caesar, a valiant general destined for greatness, taking on an empire greater than himself.