The Astral Plane

“Obits From the Future”

by Mrs. Sowerberry

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Dead at 41

June 22, 2025

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, chairman, and chief officer of popular social networking site Facebook, passed away on Friday.  He was 41 years old.

In a tearful statement outside her Palo Alto residence, Dr. Priscilla Chan revealed to the press that her late husband had taken his own life, succumbing to a long and difficult battle with depression.  Dr. Chan declined to identify Mr. Zuckerberg’s method of suicide, prompting a wave of online criticism that Mr. Zuckerberg’s lifelong commitment to open-source software indicated that would have wanted the public to be aware of his death in all possible detail.  A representative for Dr. Chan and Mr. Zuckerberg’s family replied, “Although the late Mr. Zuckerberg advocated for openness and transparency in technology, it is not my clients’ belief that Mark would desire to cause his family further grief by opening up the particulars of his demise to speculation from the public.”

Mr. Zuckerberg’s deteriorating mental state was no secret in the last years of his life.  After rival social networking company MySpace roared back onto the cyberscene in 2021, under the guidance of Specific Media LLC and Justin Timberlake, Zuckerberg’s grip on his company’s operations and his own sanity began to slip.  “It was really weird,” according to former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg upon her retirement from the company in 2022. “He started using all this archaic language, like referring to memos as bulletins and instructing his administrative staff to tell people “this profile no longer exists” when he was out of office.”  Ms. Sandberg, who could not be reached for further comment after “leaning out” of the workforce (she is rumored to be acting as primary caregiver to her teenage daughter’s newborn baby), has also related stories of Mr. Zuckerberg asking friends and colleagues if they were “friends of Tom,” presumably a reference to the once-ubiquitous face of MySpace Classic in the first decade of the 21^st century.

Others noticed evidence of Mark’s disengagement from his own company and social life.  Microsoft co-founder and fellow billionaire Bill Gates recalled the aftermath of Zuckerberg’s disastrous 2023 interview with Oprah Winfrey: “We all tried to dissuade Mark from doing that interview, even his publicity agent, who was a real soulless [expletive deleted] most of the time.  Priscilla asked me to come down and talk some sense into him, and Melinda insisted on coming, even though she was in the middle of a round of chemo.  He seemed almost comatose, just staring at the screen of his laptop, deleting his entire Facebook friend list.  The most bizarre part is that he wouldn’t stop playing Farmville. I mean, he just got obsessed with it, and even when we tried to encourage him to add some friends back, you know to help him play, at best he ignored us.  At worst, he’d start singing “Cry Me a River” or “What Goes Around” by Justin Timberlake. It was a rough time for everyone.”

Mr. Zuckerberg never officially stepped down as CEO of Facebook, but a board-approved steering committee was appointed in 2024 to oversee day-to-day operations and executive decision.  It is believed that this committee has actually been acting on Mr. Zuckerberg’s behalf since late in 2022.  In light of his demise, it is unclear whether Facebook will name a replacement CEO or continue to be run by an executive committee.

Funeral services for Zuckerberg will be held at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California prior to his interment in a cryogenic underground bunker.  In addition to Dr. Chan, Mr. Zuckerberg is survived by parents Karen and Edward Zuckerberg and sisters Randi, Donna, and Arielle. The family has requested donations to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in lieu of flowers.