It might have been a bad idea to open LinkedIn on a hot day like today. Even more so than usual. But because reasons1 I did it and oh boy.
Is it just me or did it get even worse in the last couple of months? Just scrolling through the feed feels like the worst kind of parallel universe I can imagine. Just an endless stream of corporate drones, some of them I don’t even know, but are helpfully provided to me by some kind of cruel algorithm, desperately trying to get the attention of “important people” by doing what can only be described as having a little wank in public. And for 99% of them it doesn’t even look like they’re enjoying any of it.
Great, AI has given you a list of 20 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐚𝐰 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 – posting this will surely let the world know what a great employee you are. Congratulations.
That internal workshop with some “trainer,” who conveniently is the cousin of your head of HR was a real game changer and so inspirational? What did it inspire you to do? Advance your career by posting to LinkedIn?
Good god.
And of course doubt creeps in. I see people who I know are actually good at their jobs and who I thought would not be in a position to have to embarrass themselves by being LinkedIn Posters. And I see absolute dimwits cosplaying as thought leaders and actually having a captive audience.
Do I have to become like them, too? After all, I’m not too far away from being a dimwit and I (clearly) don’t mind embarrassing myself online, either.
But first I might need to understand why people do this. Write and read all that inane drivel on a website that’s basically peter-principle-as-a-service. Do people actually enjoy going there? And if so, what about it is the fun part? Or are they just trapped by the illusion that this is just what they have to do to stay afloat in corporate capitalism?
Or at least I hope it’s an illusion. If not, it would be even bleaker. Ugh. Just imagine they’re right about this?
Maybe I should just do what a (former, as of this month) coworker did and just disable my account. It’s clearly not for me and every time I look at that website, I get this weird twitch underneath my eye.
Or maybe I’m just grumpy because I ran out of ice cream.
- No, not those reasons. I’m not actively looking. But hey, my DMs are open. ↩︎
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