Mark Zuckerberg was in Alabama earlier this week as part of his ongoing mission to visit all 50 states and '"talk to more people about how they're living, working and thinking about the future." On Monday evening, before the tech billionaire and his wife, Priscilla Chan, decided to dine at the OvenBird restaurant in Birmingham, Zuckerberg's personal assistant phoned the eatery with a specific demand -- that the restaurant staff be ordered to refrain from speaking to the Facebook founder and taking photographs of him.
Tech titan meets with Coach Saban
The Daily Mail reports that Zuckerberg kicked off his tour of Alabama on Sunday, spending an afternoon with shrimp boat captains in Mobile. During his trip he also met with college football coach Nick Saban, former death row inmate Anthony Ray Hinton and the staff of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
Zuckerberg has shared his travel experiences with fans on Facebook. On Tuesday he wrote a lengthy post about his conversations with Saban and some of Alabama's star players. Zuckerburg's post compared coaching a football team to running a company. "Many of the same things go into building a good company and a winning football program -- a focus on recruiting, developing talent and setting high expectations," observed the social media mogul.
What was the purpose of your mission again?
But it was at the OvenBird restaurant in Birmingham where the billionaire was most likely to encounter ordinary, everyday working-class Americans who don't helm NCAA Division-I athletic programs, compete for Heisman trophies, or pilot million-dollar shrimp boats -- and the billionaire apparently had no desire to interact with the unwashed peasant masses.
Zuckerberg demanded that he and his wife be seated in a private room separated from other diners -- a request that seems to defeat the very purpose of his visit.
The Facebook founder's next stop on his "connect with real people" tour was Mississippi, where, on Tuesday evening, Zuckerberg and his wife enjoyed a meal the same way that millions of working-class stiffs do every day of their dreary, miserable lives -- with Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman.