First it was sunscreen. Now Mark Zuckerberg is on to another form of protection.
The Facebook boss raised eyebrows across the internet after filming himself chucking spears at targets while wearing ear protection. The Z-man had originally posted the bizarre clip to Facebook, but it’s since been reposted to Twitter, where it’s racked up 1 million views.
Zuckerberg, 37, captioned the clip “I have a very particular set of skills,” in an apparent reference to the immortal line from the thriller “Taken.”
The perplexing slow-motion footage, which was posted Monday from an unspecified locale, shows the tech titan hurling spears at targets while sporting sunglasses and earwear as Audioslave blares in the background. After missing his first throw by a wide margin, the T-shirt-clad social-media whiz nails a bullseye.
The clip concludes with Zuckerberg strolling toward the camera with a big grin like a Maasai warrior after slaying a lion.
The flummoxing footage comes a day after the social networking bigwig posted a now-deleted clip of himself shooting a compound bow at a row of bowling pins a la Ted Nugent.
“If I were an Avenger, pretty sure I’d be Hawkeye,” read the caption — an apparent reference to the expert archer from the Marvel superhero squad.
He had teased the clips with a Facebook post that read: “A trail I wanted to hike is out of hiking permits, but has plenty of hunting permits available. That’s basically saying: look, you can’t walk here unless you also bring a bow and arrow. So I guess we’re doing this.”
Needless to say, the Facebook creator was brutally speared on social media over the display, with many commenters wondering why he needed ear protection for a silent activity.
“Someone better tell him that they aren’t guns,” tweeted one critic of the Zuck’s survivalist showcase. “No need for the ear protection.”
“It’s important to wear ear protection due to the roar of the crowd,” quipped another on Facebook.
Another Twitter comic poked fun at Facebook’s aggressive user-tracking technology, writing, “the spear is the ‘allow app to track’ pop-up on iOS, the target is my privacy, Mark Zuckerberg is Mark Zuckerberg.”
Meanwhile, one critic wondered how the Z-man could be so pleased with his bullseye when he was only “five feet away from the target.”
“How long before someone superimposes Trump on that target,” tweeted another, apparently referencing Facebook’s recent announcement that’d it’d be renewing its ban on former President Donald Trump for two years.
In that same vein, many joked that Zuckerberg was prepping to escalate his recent beef with Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“Practicing for the next time he sees Tim Cook,” tweeted one person about the multibillionaire, who had jabbed Apple earlier this week over the fees the iPhone maker charges companies to sell wares using its App Store.
In a blog post that hit moments before Cook took the stage at his company’s high-stakes developers conference (WWDC), Zuckerberg told content creators that it won’t charge them until at least 2023 for using Facebook to distribute their work, promote events or sell subscriptions.
“When we do introduce a revenue share, it will be less than the 30% that Apple and others take,” Zuckerberg had said.
This isn’t the first time Zuckerberg has embarrassed himself at an outdoor activity. Last June, the Facebook honcho was torched on social media after he was photographed surfing in Hawaii while wearing tons of sunscreen, and later said it was a disguise for the paparazzi.
“I noticed there was this paparazzi guy following us and, so I was like, ‘Oh I don’t want him to recognize me, so you know what I’m gonna do? I’m just gonna put a ton of sunscreen on my face,’” Zuckerberg said. “And that backfired.”
