Kai Lenny reveals backlash from friendship with “socially awkward” Mark Zuckerberg

“People were writing me off and giving me grief.”

New Yorker Justin Jay is a master portraitist who works with a Nikon film camera, an ancient manual-focus 35mm prime affixed to the beak, and made his name shooting superstars like P.Diddy, pre-incarceration, Jay Z and Outkast. 

A few years back he released an epic hard-cover book of a decade shooting the North Shore. My favourite photo in the lavish tome was this image of Dane Reynolds, excluded from a Bruce Irons make-out session at a North Shore party.

Lately, he has pivoted into podcasting with his show The Plug, with guests including the band MGMT, Tony Hawk, Devendra Banhart, Brian Austin Green and a smattering of surfers and skaters like Mick Fanning and Nathan Florence. 

His latest episode stars Kai Lenny, who almost died last year and only one week after the fairytale election of a devil-may-care, dare-to-dream businessman to the highest office in the land. 

Lenny, who is thirty two, was surfing his foil-board in Maui when he “wiped out” after a back-flip attempt and the board’s hydro-foil slashed his chest, dagger style, and perilously close to his heart.

Of all the things we might remember Kai Lenny for, it’s his friendship with Mark Zuckerberg that excites the most.

Lenny has been described as Robin to Mark Zuckerberg’s Batman and in this episode of The Plug Lenny dives into the minutiae of a beautiful friendship. 

Jay talks about how “notoriously protective” and “catty” surfers can be towards people perceived as outsiders. He references the great Jonah Hill, who took his hazing very well, and pivots into Lenny and Zuck’s strictly platonic friendship.

Excerpts:

His awkwardness definitely makes people assume things and by hanging out with him I got to know who he really was and he’s actually a really good athlete, surprisingly. He’d run six miles every morning, he’s been doing rowing since college days, you know he runs the biggest social media network on the planet, and I don’t know enough about coding and all the stuff that he really does to make a judgment of that. I think it’s impossible to make everybody happy. But what I know from just hanging out with him personally, it never felt weird at all. I have a lot of respect for anybody who puts themself you know outside their comfort zone and wants to learn something new.”

“Regardless of who you are, i you are one of the top three wealthiest people on the planet everyone wants to tear you down. Everyone praises Michael Jordan or even Kelly Slater, but at the time, when they were at their peak of their powers, everyone’s trying to tear them down, bring them down. And that’s just the nature of being a champion. And in his case, he is a champion because he has the biggest social media network and is arguably one of the most powerful humans on Earth. He can control communication and knowledge and all these sort of things.”

“People were writing me off and giving me grief. But I was, like, this is such a sick opportunity to literally meet maybe one of the most powerful people. What he does with that power over time only history can judge it. I’ve always felt it’s pretty unique opportunity when someone that is so influential across the entire globe wants to meet you. It’s always worth seeing them. You don’t have to disagree with everything. A lot of times people that are at these high positions are expected to be perfect and no one’s perfect…I would be willing to meet any one of our US presidents, even if I didn’t vote for them.”

Essential.