It’s probably a net good thing that there are social media sites for people of various proclivities and needs. There’s Snapchat for mean younger millennials, BlueSky for elder millennial furries, TikTik for overwhelmed Gen Zers, and Facebook for Boomers who wish their elder millennial furry kids would still talk to them. And then there’s LinkedIn.
How best to describe LinkedIn? I think part of the genius of the site is that it’s not just a place to list jobs. It’s a professional social media platform. A deeply strange one. I once knew a therapist who’d just moved from NYC to LA, and I asked what the difference was between the two places, based solely on her patients.
“In New York, everyone tries to convince you their life is worse than it is,” she explained.” In Los Angeles, it’s exactly the opposite.”
LinkedIn culture is sort of like LA culture, but an even more erstatz and AI-inflected version. It’s one of those places where they film when it’s too expensive to film in LA, but it needs to look like LA. I guess this means that LinkedIn is the Vancouver of social media?
I say all this because I had a strange interaction this week with the platform based on a post I wrote on The Autopian. It was about how Nissan’s new CEO, a guy named Ivan Espinosa, is in an unofficial Nissan house band called Tempura Crime Scene. I was delighted by this post and challenged the band to play the New York Auto Show.
While I don’t usually share posts on LinkedIn, I did share this one, mostly because I wanted to see if I could convince someone at Nissan to make it happen. As hoped, Nissan USA’s Director of Corporate Comms responded positively.
So you’re saying there’s a chance…
If that was the only interaction I’d had, it would be fine. But then I logged in and noticed someone shared the post, and even did so in a flattering-sounding way. Here’s what I first saw when I was tagged:
From Drumbeats to Driving Innovation @ Nissan Motor Corporation
Sharing a fantastic article by Matt Hardigree at The Autopian about Nissan’s new CEO, Ivan Espinosa — who also happens to be the drummer for the band Tempura Crime Scene.
Oh, cool, I thought. I wandered over to the post to see the full thing.
At first glance, it might seem like just a fun side note. But being a drummer is more than keeping time — it’s about:
Leadership through rhythm – the drummer sets the pace and keeps the group in sync, just as a CEO drives alignment across a global organization.
Listening & collaboration – great drummers know when to push forward and when to support, much like guiding a team through market challenges and opportunities.
Energy & creativity – the heartbeat of the music mirrors the passion and innovation required to inspire a company’s culture and customers.
Oh, no…
You can click the link above to read the full thing.
LinkedIn is full of this sort of exec-speak, Brene Brownnoser kinda content. I cannot say with 100% certainty that this post was written by AI, but it follows an extremely popular format that AI loves. You’ve probably seen it if you’ve been on Linkedin before. It provides four bullet points and ends with two emojis.
This post feels like it was either written by AI, or it was written to ape a style that AI learned by reading too many LinkedIn posts in some sort of degenerative rhetorical spiral. The “author” of this post appears to be a part-time social media consultant named Stephen C. Holtzman, whose day job is doing social media work for a few Toyota and Mitsubishi dealers, as well as some other local businesses in Canada, according to his profile.
He’s somehow amassed over 30,000 followers on LinkedIn with this schtick, so fair play. His post got more engagement than my post, and I wrote the original article. It seems like a lot of big deal PR and Comms people follow him.
Did I follow him? I do now. LinkedIn may be a Potemkin version of the real professional world, but there are advantages to being prominent there. I suppose the easiest way to thrive in an uncanny valley is to be equally uncanny.
Also, he linked to the full article, which I always appreciate.
Top graphic images: LinkedIn
I was in my late fifties and a successful freelancer when I realized that – with new work getting increasingly difficult to find using my old networking methods – I would have to join LinkedIn. So I took a deep breath and did what I had to do.
I retired early.
Yeah, LinkedIn is just a cesspool of these pompous idiots now.
The one two punch of the loss of the USA and internet culture’s final stage enshittification is pretty depressing… Things happen a lot faster now than they did nearly two millennia ago, so the fall will be swift.
God I hate these people. Other social media might also be terrible but people are at least slightly more genuine. LinkedIn is a jerk-off contest for who can fit the most pointless biz-speak they can per paragraph.
The company that recently destroyed both my future and theirs by ending my employment had insisted I create a LinkedIn profile several years ago. So my profile mostly promotes what I was doing for them, but I never posted any content or looked at anything on the site.
I’m now looking for work, and nothing at all useful is coming from LinkedIn. Links to old vacancies, entirely spurious vacancies just to make me click on the linked company’s career page, random scammy weirdness, it’s all a mess.
And the people who post on there are just so weird, it’s like every post is written from inside someone else’s arse.
I think it’s useful resource, and I’d certainly check the profile of anyone I was hiring so I could reject them based on the obvious confidentiality breeches and insane opinions people post.
I fully retired in December 2023, and I still get emails from them about companies looking and interested in my profile. I guess I need to research (not going to say the G word) how to make that stop happening.
Anyway Captain, I hope you find work that is fulfilling and economically viable. Whether through LinkIn or, preferably some more human, organic, way.
Technically I’ve just retired extremely early, and it’ll only become a period of unemployment retrospectively if I ever get a new job.
I mean financially I have to get a job, but I do enjoy pretending to be retired.
Well, you’re probably right to filter them to junk. But until it gets too annoying, it amuses me to see what positions I could apply for. Or who is interested in me. Once in a while, it’s an ex-wife.
I’m in the same boat, although I had a LinkedIn profile from pre-Microsoft days. I rarely post or follow there because it’s just too strange now.
Friendly Neighborhood Nerd here. I all but guarantee that LinkedIn post that “sounds like AI” was at least in part written by ChatGPT.
I mean, that post is obviously AI slop.
And if it’s not, the author should just lie and claim it is, because if it’s natural writing…. ooof.
It’s probably natural for Mark Zuckerberg, but I’m half convinced at this point that Mark Zuckerberg *is* an A.I.! (LOL.)
…also, small nitpick. What we currently call “A.I.” is itself marketing slop — the proper term is M.L. — machine learning. Words matter, and I’m a nerd ;3
I’ll offer a brief anecdote. I created my LinkedIn account during the meeting announcing that they had acquired the startup I worked for. More than 10 years later I’m still a daily user. If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.
YMMV: I’m in management
OMG the “most relevant” comment in response to that post is:
> great analogy connecting drumming skills to leadership. in my experience, the most effective leaders often have diverse creative outlets that actually enhance their strategic thinking and team dynamics. i’d love to hear your thoughts on the post i just shared about cross-industry innovation
√ use of “leaders”
√ “I’d love to hear your thoughts”
√ sharing a self-serving post to ride the post’s clout for his own benefit
If you want some entertainment, head over to reddit’s r/linkedinlunatics
I only recently learned there was a social-media-type side to linkedin. I had always thought it was just a job search platform. I have an account there, but one I created back in 2005 or 2006 when I was job hunting, and I don’t think the social media side of it existed then. I haven’t had a reason to be job hunting since 2011, so it was totally off my radar.
You must have done a better job setting up your account than I did.
I get multiple emails saying employers (I hesitate to call them people) are interested. Despite declaring myself retired on my profile.
And it’s amusing what positions they think I’m qualified for, given my stated profile as retired. And most of them don’t even sound like a good match for me, what I’ve done or anything that might be tempting.
Maybe… they get money for how many people/accounts and email inboxes they hit when some company uses them to recruit. ???
Seriously, LinkedIn, I’m effing done!
Oh, I am pretty positive I get emails as well, I just filter them to junk. 🙂
Why didn’t I think of that? Lol!
Haha reminds me of that post about what I learned from getting married. Absolute lunatics on there. Also my go to sign it’s AI written is the over use of the hyphen. Most people don’t use it that much.
But I like using the hyphen – it’s really effective, despite its general disuse – and feels mechanically nice to type – the space-hyphen-space rocking motion of the wrist is satisfying – – – and wish more people used it.
To describe it in my own words:
People who seriously use LinkedIn as a social media platform, are the kind who use dating sites because they desperately don’t want to show up to weddings without a plus one.
Man, I can’t believe Corporate Mastodon replaced Mastodon again.
Or rather, I can, but I’ll do my duty as a citizen of the internet by whining about it and presumably receiving counter-whining in retaliation.
As for LinkedIn, whenever I get a notification pointing me at some popular post, it’s saying something obvious that’s seemingly doing the equivalent of farming reddit karma. I only have the app because in theory, I’ll die without being on a job platform.
And of course, while I call Bluesky “corporate Mastodon”, at least it’s “the corporate-owned TwitX alternative” and not a social media platform for corporate-speak.
LinkedIn has been infested by the types of people who don’t actually know how to speak and use sixty filler words in a sixty three word sentence. The types of people who smile, but there’s no shine in their eyes. The types of people who invite you out for lunch on a day off only to try and coerce you into contributing to their department’s project with the lure that it might get you a recommendation when you’re up to be promoted. The types of people who wake up at six, get to the gym at seven, are at work at eight thirty, and stay there until six before attending their HOA meetings at seven in the evening. The types of people who see you sitting on your front porch with some tea, watching the traffic go by as your dog sleeps under your chair, and call you lazy for not “maximizing your time.”
It is a place of horror and inhumanity. Where people are convinced they are machines, and where productivity is the holy word. Go not there lest ye lose touch with your soul, and watch it ironclad drop to the darkness far beyond the fleeting touch of your quivering fingers.
There was a nano-trend a few years back of parents posting about their kids showing “drive” and “ambition” and dressing up in work clothes to accompany them to work. With photos. As if having a corporate job is the pinnacle of human achievement.
That’s honestly pretty disgusting, can’t just let kids be kids.
Same with “grit”, although LI grit is not the kind used for finishing.
I joined when they were a very early start up and nobody really knew what social media was. It was then and still now, useful for me to track down people I needed to in my industry. As for posting or reading posts, I don’t recall doing much of that at all. I just don’t give two excrements about social media and the exchanges there. As for the amount of emails I get, it does seem like they have enshittified like just about everything else these days. Not using other sites, I don’t know, but I’m left with the impression it is at least less toxic. But, after using it so long, I might also just be swimming in a pot of water coming to a boil and not know it.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to go finish filling in my TPS reports.
I can’t stand all the fake corporate-speak on LinkedIn. I think my dad would have loved it, in a way…he was a master of hitting all the buzzwords the execs loved to hear while throwing in little ‘easter eggs’ for all the other folks. The execs thought he was passing along sage leadership advice, but the guys he worked with picked up on the little in-jokes. I wish I had that talent. I have been in meetings with people who spoke in nothing but buzzwords; it made me think of ‘duckspeak,’ and I’m still not entirely sure what they were talking about.
I have a LinkedIn account, and I make sure I follow all the right companies/people (especially before an interview, for all the good that has done so far), but I never actually use it unless I need to “reach out” (ugh) to someone for a reference.
My LinkedIn is connected to an email address that was put into a strange limbo where it no longer exists, but also can’t be remade, so I don’t get emails from there anymore, and have no interest in trying to log in or try to fix that problem in any way based on the posts I see other places that are pulled from LinkedIn,
That email address getting nuked caused a lot of problems for years, but losing my LinkedIn was not one of them.
I quit BaceFook 15 years ago, and till now I thought everyone was still there. I visit linkedin looking for …something that I can never find. Instead I find stuff that should have /s after it, but does not.
After reading this article and the comments, I feel much better. Thank you.
FWIW, the Autopian and GunsNRovers (I have a Land Rover problem) are the only places I actually feel comfortable commenting.
Brilliant description of Linkedin
I created an account years ago. I logged in once then went “what the fuck am I doing?” I logged out and have never looked at it again.
I despise LinkedIn, but consider it a necessary evil. The two previous job I had before my current one were a result of a recruiter finding my profile on LinkedIn. So I just use it to park an online resume, post an occasional job update, and talk to people I want to stay in contact with (if we don’t already chat on Discord).
That’s pretty much the use case for any sane person. As long as your current and past job titles are in there, you have important coworkers/supervisors in your network and your resume is up to date, you’ve maximized that platform’s usefulness.
A high school classmate reached out to me on there about a reunion, and the whole conversation felt like he was sitting next to a manager he wanted to impress. I set my account to as private as possible and unlinked him or whatever you call it on that hellhole site.
I have to use it quite a bit for work, and have had a lot of good relationships start there (and gotten some jobs – either directly or indirectly). But man, the minute you start getting into people’s posts, etc…it’s the absolute worst.
Last time I was on LinkedIn, which was specifically to add one friend in hopes of linking them to a couple others for a job, I noticed I hadn’t updated my publications in three years.
Then I logged out.
I use it a lot but I loathe it. Lately I’m getting a weekly notification from LinkedIn asking if I’m hiring for these 10 jobs at my company. Jobs that are already posted on LinkedIn. I’m in a role thats not HR related so I don’t understand why they think they need to connect with me on it. And absolutely no way to tell them to leave me alone about it.
I hate this. I work for a giant multinational. No, LinkedIn, I’m not hiring for these 10 jobs in Australia.
I loathe bad targeting. Its like you’re wasting money even attempting this, why can’t you at least do it well.
That brings me back to the month I got Toyota ads…in Vietnamese. I do not know Vietnamese and I have no Vietnamese ancestry or family.
What I can’t stand is the other side of this equation; sales guys/gals seeing where I work, guessing my company email address, and sending me sales pitches that make it sound like we already know each other.
I get it. I’m on it because I feel like I have to be. If you work in a field with regular layoffs you should be on regularly. Why does it feel like so much of what we “have to do” for work slowly eats away at our soul? Is there some small part of humanity that actually likes this? It’s marketers I guess.
I hate that too. My least favorite are the ones who act like they already have a relationship/account with your company. I always call them out. Oh, who did you set it up with? Why are you talking to me then?
For some inexplicable reason the algorithm thinks my business in in the hospitality industry and I get pinged constantly to see if I’m hiring cooks or restaurant staff. At the same time I get offers to go work for hotels and resorts in those positions.
To me the best thing I can do to any of these businesses that intrusively harvest data is give them bad data, so I often click though just to retard them even more.
I have a fairly uncommon last name and somehow my contact info has been attached to someone else with the same first name and last name in another industry. So I get sales calls for him on my cell phone constantly as well. All this data aggregation should be illegal.
BTW are you hiring?
LinkedIn actually creeps me out for some uncanny reason. Maybe it reeks of desperation? It feels like it’s nothing but those people who go to business connection mixers in hopes of scoring the big one.
It’s because it’s literally inhuman and unnatural to talk that way. It’s corporations given corporeal form and spouting things humanity was never intended to say.