Why is LinkedIn such an uncomfortable place?
I’ll take a break from my semi-regularly scheduled travel-esk, adventure-esk post to comment on LinkedIn.
There is something insidious about LinkedIn, isn’t there? You can feel it when you scroll – since they’ve made us all into scroll junkies. There is something off-putting about LinkedIn’s feed and it wasn’t like this before. I joined LinkedIn in the early days when no one took it very seriously, when you didn’t even need to have a profile picture and you didn’t need to have a status message – you didn’t even need to include it in your resume to show “online” presence. It was like a space in the internet that you can use to apply for jobs and maybe keep in touch with some people you didn’t want as friends on Facebook.
LinkedIn is the main networking platform for serious people
Nowadays, LinkedIn has morphed into a learning platform, a Facebook-esk space, and a place to generally ‘humble’ brag about your new promotion or job – with ‘humble’ being the operative word here. Things are not ‘humble’ anymore on LinkedIn and people are far from being ‘genuine’. Between the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, the millions of jobs lost during this time and the lockdowns, LinkedIn became an unbearable sink-hole of all things pretentious, ingenuine and fake. But this is not the Facebook fake that we can now (kind of) identify. It is not the superficial, look-at-me-look-at-my-amazing-life fake. It’s the self-help gurus that have popped out of nowhere with their dishonest posts about available support and useless content developed just to stay ‘relevant’ on LinkedIn. It’s the ‘guy-I-knew-was-a-jerk-in-college’ now posting about self-love and tips for being confident in your ability. He hasn’t changed. I know because he is still my friend on Facebook. It’s the long status posts about nothing but how great that one idea I had made me into the perfect HR manager I am now. It’s the famous account that posts motivational quotes to gain more followers that really isn’t motivating anyone because we know you play the system too. It’s the empty praise, and the ‘celebrate’ button that really means nothing. If you want to ‘celebrate’ someone you should do more than ‘like’ it, that’s what Facebook is there for – or are we just pretending that a button is enough.
Occasionally there is a genuine post on LinkedIn ---
—– a post about the actual, human state of things, about that job someone worked very hard to get, about that work someone is proud of, about the actual status of the job market, about the pandemic that is crippling all of us in more ways than one – nothing ‘effortlessly’ crafted to have just the right kind of tone and sound just the regular kind of normal, nothing self-righteous, just real. Now on LinkedIn, you have to engage your connections, your followers – but why? That’s an honest question. As a personal account, as a place meant to support portfolio building and network development, why do I want your advice on something I know you know nothing about? Are we ok with contributing to the “opinions as facts” problem that is plaguing us? Does doing something once qualify me as an expert? Why do I need to force a social presence? Are you actually evaluating my ability to do a job based on how many likes or posts I’ve made/commented on? Does following someone famous or a well-known company make me more interesting?
The very fact of LinkedIn is that your network matters but somehow people are posting about how they believed in themselves and were able to achieve all their dreams even though it was tough and they got some NOs along the way. Brag but brag just enough to make it seem like you are actually humble. I’m a little bit tired of all the pretense. I wish there was a forum or social media company that isn’t copying the algorithm that we all know is leading us astray (Netflix’s Social Dilemma anyone?), dumbing us down, crafting us into predictable users. I understand why people retreat to spaces on reddit to have actual human communication. I wished for better from LinkedIn but I can see it’s no different – and I think the blame is on us.