by Tom Deisboeck

… yes, there’s some pesky odor because it’s high season for self-congratulatory shite. No, I’m not referring to the slowly dying breed of superfluous Christmas letters that people still use to remind everybody that they went to Yale or Harvard, travelled again to some far flung vacation spot that oozes exclusivity (Covid-variant permitting and aptly documented in a family pic that looks a lot like last year’s Ralph Lauren commercial), and finally took a new job that they surely will soon loathe just as much as the previous one (to be dealt with in a forthcoming letter).

Rather, I am referring to the sorry state of LinkedIn, the business-flavored social media behemoth. Once heralded as the new yellow pages for high-flying business managers, I’m sorry to note, it has drifted into a gargantuan marketing platform that inundates by oversharing self-serving minutiae.

And so, with all due respect, this is directed at you, my Dear LinkedIn acquaintance: Sure, go ahead and feel ‘immense’ gratitude for if not satisfaction with your Klingons-rivalling business influence by flipping through your ever-growing network of people, who, let’s face it, were too polite to turn down your request to connect or ‘link’ – but at your own peril. The feed updates have become a mind-numbing avalanche of thinly veiled self-marketing combined with occasional re-posting of an acrobatic squirrel that excels going through a superhuman obstacle parkour (Bravo!), intertwined with whatever straight up PR the underlying algorithm deems of even rudimentary interest to the unsuspecting user. What the f*** happened with criteria such as information quality, relevance and value add?

My all-time favorite is the practice of posting of or commenting on famous thinkers’ purported proverbs or successful biz leaders’ every minute utterance, because they are so clearly insightful beyond belief, because they seem to have some distant resemblance with either Gandhi, Steve Jobs or Sun Tzu – in no particular order – or, hey, because you have nothing even remotely meaningful or original to say yourself. Positively pathetic.

Why on Earth do you feel compelled to announce to everybody “I am so proud to be part of this team” (whose paid job it was to perform, which they did, apparently to anyone’s surprise including yours), or “I’m honored to chair this panel at a phenomenal conference” (that you co-organized and promptly invited yourself to) or that “I’m humbled having (finally) received that coveted award” (that your company has paid for in the first place) …”?, other than it’s code for “look at how great I am ! – now show me some goddam respect by giving me a ‘Like’ – like you mean it ! – since really no one else does” … sad.

Also, racing to be among the first to publicly congratulate a prolific self-poster to yet another milestone along the inflationary title alphabet that they just couldn’t wait to share, makes you at best a perpetuating enabler, at worst a suck up with a trigger finger. Codependency comes to mind.

And so, if it’s really ~26-32 likes you’re after, post a picture of your or someone else’s dog, perhaps add a quote from Warren Buffett, in Hindi or some other language you don’t understand – and call it a day, preferably on Facebook. Or, better yet, how about a refreshingly honest post for a change? … something along the lines of “After what surely felt like a life-sentence I finally found the stones to quit that bloodsucking firm, and so I look forward to practically anything else – including spending more time with my spoiled family and a hobby I continue to suck at and, given the current circumstances, can barely afford”. That surely would deserve a “Like”.

Think about it this way – if you have time for posting all this self-adulation on social media, you really signal to your network that you have not enough work to do, that, consequently, you are thoroughly overpaid and frankly completely wrong for your current job – in which case you should use your LinkedIn network to quickly find a new one, best quietly. And finally, no, I don’t want a ‘thumb up’ – just take yours out of your mouth or a**, and then do something meaningful instead of writing about it … which is precisely why I’m off now.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Deisboeck