Why One Artist Went Straight To Menlo Park To Troll Mark Zuckerberg

Artist Matthew LaPenta wanted to troll Facebook in a big way, so he went straight to the Menlo Park campus to post some of his anti-Facebook-practice artwork.

Animal New York reports that "in an homage to Orwell's 1984 character, LaPenta has dedicated his latest piece to Mark Zuckerberg by plastering his face on homemade streets signs that declare "Big Brother Is Watching You.'"

The art stayed up for several days at the Facebook campus before being removed.

In an email to Business Insider, LaPenta writes the following about his art:

I become a bit obsessed with the facebook color palette a few years ago in some of my minimalist internet interpretations. Facebook had become such an integral part of my life and I thought that it was a bit pathetic to be honest. But on the other side of it I have friends all over the country and the world so it is integral in my everyday routine if I want to keep a connection to all these "friends."

The reason I created this new body of work was inspired by facebook aggressive attack on it's users rights. Specifically the part when they say "whatever you post to facebook is ours". Or maybe it was their use of controlling your news feed to do psychological mind experiments. Or it could have been their continued partnership with the NSA.

Look I don't hate Mark Zuckerberg, I just think he needed an artistic/comedic reality check. There are a lot of similarities to the 1984 novel by George Orwell and facebook. They have the ability to control the information you are fed and they can see all of your social activity. We have given up our rights to use this free software platform however. It was the users who actively decided to forfeit a bit of freedom.

Maybe it's the users that need a comedic reality check. Maybe I made this work for myself. Maybe I need to stop using facebook so much.

It's also ironic that I'll probably post this article to my facebook page. Am I bragging, I don't think so. Am I self obsessed? I try hard not to be in this selfie world but facebook has reach and power. It's almost counterproductive to not use it. We just need to always be looking over our shoulder from now on.

I was expecting to get a bunch of likes on my facebook page. And that's exactly what I got. I think people get it but they don't open up a dialogue about it.

It's so much easier to just click LIKE.