Writing a century apart, two authors focus on the uber-wealthy’s obvious carelessness. In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby. And in 2025, Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote Careless People. Wynn-Williams’s title comes from Fitzgerald’s assertion that, in the 1920s, affluent Daisy and Tom Buchanan were “careless people.”
In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby wants to reunite with Daisy whom he first met in 1917 in Louisville and fell in love with her before going to fight in World War I. Nick Carraway, Daisy’s cousin, meets the adult Gatsby on West Egg, Long Island, where Daisy now lives. He arranges for Gatsby to have tea with her because Nick knows that Daisy’s husband Tom is having an affair with Myrtle. Afterward, Gatsby continues to seek Daisy’s company with lavish parties at his mansion across the water from her home. At lunch one day, Tom spots Daisy telling Gatsby that she loves him. That afternoon, Tom drives them into Manhattan in Gatsby’s car. When they return, Daisy drives. When Myrtle sees the car, she thinks Tom is driving and rushes into the highway to stop him. Daisy hits her. Tom subsequently tells Myrtle’s husband, George Wilson, that Gatsby owns the car but not that Daisy was driving. Thinking that Gatsby has killed his wife, George shoots him.
Afterward, Nick learns about Jay Gatsby’s past. Jay Gatz invented himself at seventeen when he began working for Cody, a wealthy man who promised to leave money to Jay in his will but did not. Soon Gatz renames himself Gatsby and finds other means to attract the desirable Daisy whose “voice is full of money.” He becomes involved in illegal stock market deals, skimming enough money to buy a mansion with a view of Daisy and Tom’s dock.
After Gatsby dies, Tom refuses to defend him or admit what happened. Nick, who sees Tom as bigoted and self-righteous, says of him that:
I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
Nick understands that the green light Gatsby watches at the end of Daisy’s deck from his mansion across the bay represents “the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . .” And Nick also recognizes that they are all “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Wynn-Williams has observed the same quest for more money, no matter the source, in the wealthy owners and managers of Facebook. As a diplomatic representative from New Zealand at the United Nations, she thought that Facebook’s stated desire to unite people around the world was wonderful. She thought Facebook’s power would absolutely “change the world.” “Whatever Facebook decided to do—what it did with the voices that were gathering there—would change the course of human events. I was sure of it.” She spent over a year creating and “pitching” a job at Facebook to market its benefits to other governments.
In July, 2011, she became Facebook’s Manager of Global Public Policy. By the fall of 2012, Facebook had over one billion users. Wynn-Williams planned occasions around the world where Mark Zuckerberg could meet leaders of other countries. She and Zuckerberg bonded on these trips by flying together, going to bars, eating at Michelin-starred restaurants. And while also socializing with the management team, she began to recognize their preferences. Her encounters with them revealed people very different from their public personas, especially Sheryl Sandberg, who did not espouse what she wrote in her best-seller, Lean In.
As the team grows and other persons take leadership, Wynn-Williams raises her child and copes with sexual harassment. She also observes a shift in the culture toward money from any source. The team began allowing political posts from around the world based on their revenues without monitoring them too closely. She concludes that Facebook allowed the Myramar civil war because no one at Facebook could translate Burmese and remove the vitriolic posts the two factions flung at each other. And she knew that money from political advertisements helped to elect Trump in 2016. After all, the wealth these ads generated were feeding the coffers of Facebook’s personnel.
Although Wynn-Williams wanted to leave Facebook, she could not find another job that offered Facebook’s salary and necessary health insurance. Among many issues, Meta’s revealing of data and information to China that could harm the United States concerned her. After she accused a boss of sexual harassment, Facebook fired her for “poor performance and toxic behavior,” thereby removing her capability of resigning.
Although we do not have input from those exposed in Facebook (Meta), we can assume that Wynn-Williams has represented what she saw and heard accurately. She says, “These are still the same careless people. They’ve changed the name of the company from Facebook to Meta. But leopards don’t change their spots. The DNA of the company remains the same. And the more power they grasp, the less responsible they come.” She witnessed Facebook’s beginnings and the direction it now goes. She knows that if humanity does not address what can happen with the next technological advancement, Artificial Intelligence, mistakes like Facebook’s will expand exponentially.
So “careless people” bridge one hundred years—still trying to change themselves to become what they are not. Perhaps Zuckerberg is a reincarnation of the fictional Jay Gatsby—resembling him in taking what he thinks will allow him to achieve his goals.
Fitzgerald presents the American Dream as a myth of American capitalism. Money seems to give people power over those without. In 2025, we see many “careless” people like Jay Gatsby who “take” from others with no seeming concern over the hurt and loss they engender. That kindness and car-ing will soon prevail.