Getting Life Lessons on LinkedIn
It's pure "Stare into the abyss and let the abyss stare into you" vibes.
In a typical edition of This is a Newsletter!, I strive to find a balance between nutrient-rich conversations on matters of actual import and interest—or, when that fails, U.S. politics—and the fatty, high-calorie madness that imparts my signature flavor to interpreting various viral idiocies. There’s room for disagreement on where that balance should lie, and longtime readers will hopefully trust that I have some good taste in what’s palatable and what needs seasoning. But I’ve been thinking about this demon-haunted corporate circlejerk known as LinkedIn, and how it is oversaturated with the bleak and deranged thoughts of bubbleheaded white-collar higher-ups. So, yeah, today’s post is pretty much all gravy and no turkey.
LinkedIn is Facebook with an HR department. It’s Pick Me Girls but for neoliberalism. It’s for soulless corporate drones who were roller backpack kids in high school. It’s the perfect platform for toxic optimism and MLM recruiters. There’s this implicit mandated performance of overcaffeinated enthusiasm that dictates the tone and cadence of LinkedIn’s most frequent busybodies, but it’s a bit of a tell. In language that is both grandiose and anodyne and defined by its many weird anecdotes, the people who post multiple times a day on there inadvertently reveal how inessential, if not outright grifty, positions like “Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Strategist” or “Junior Consultant” really are: The longer the LinkedIn post, the less important the job.
Most viral LinkedIn posts follow one of these formulas:
The “Watch me demolish a straw-man consensus” post:
“Most people think the human touch doesn’t matter anymore in sales... But they couldn’t be more wrong! From the very first cold call, I work to develop a relationship of trust, humor, and, yes, even friendship with each potential client, understanding their needs, hopes, and especially their fears... Recently one client told me, ‘DJ, you are my best friend.’ I broke down in tears (and I’m 6’ 5”, 220, and lift daily). So next time someone tries to tell you...”
The “Look how awesome I am compared to my ancestors” post:
“I’m the first person in my family to learn how to read…”
The “I’m nothing compared to my ancestors (but I’m still pretty great)” post:
“My grandfather lied about his age so he could enlist in WWII, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, received multiple decorations, then came back home, married his high school sweetheart, and started a successful business, and if there’s one thing I learned from Grampy, it’s...”
Every miserable minute, there are Content Program Managers and Chief Brand Officers and Digital Media Specialists and Sr. SEO Managers and Senior Cyber Technologists and Implementation Specialists posting pics of themselves camping with their kids and bragging about their work-life balance. Attorneys taking selfies in courthouse bathrooms. So much #girlbossing. Every start-up is looking to hire “ROCKSTAR” graphic designers. There is a sudden and concerning uptick in the corporate use of the term “win.” A COO posts something vague about gratitude and their comment section is barraged with self-unaware, obsequious ass-kissing from minions who are a little too eager to debase themselves in public. A small business owner who runs an HVAC shop in suburban Dallas refers to himself as a CEO. An ad agency I used to work for did a series of “women in the Vietnam War” posts for whatever diversity month happened in March. The number of people who self-identify as a “Thought Leader” is terrifying. Everything has a desperate networking and self-aggrandizing angle.
I presume this particular psychotic vibe comes from PMC-types realizing their entire strata of information economy make-work is about to vanish and they have no employable skills outside of duplicitous brownnosing. The ice under their feet is melting. Every LinkedIn motivational post is like: “NEVER take a vacation, ALWAYS neglect your family, and you can be as successful as me—a mid-level manager at State Farm.”
Out of pure quarantine boredom, I conjured a LinkedIn character named Jordan Adam Taylor and made him a creative director for Ogilvy’s NYC office. His first job was an internship for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, he completed a Ph.D. in 17th-century French literature from Berkeley, and his bio stated that his work “has been recognized by the United Nations.” His profile pic is the second photo I found after typing “hipster” in Unsplash. I posted something to the effect of, “In pitch meetings, I leave out the S, W, and T in my SWOT analysis because I only focus on Opportunity!” Within two weeks, this fake profile racked up over 1,600 connections—some of whom are editors for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal—and dozens of people would DM him for career advice, networking, freelance work, and requests for interviews. I used this profile to recommend me for full-time and freelance gigs. After a few months, I merged this fake profile with my real one and absorbed his network all without LinkedIn asking me for any verification. I am now 200 connections away from being an influencer without writing a single post.
If I ever start posting on LinkedIn, I will straight up copy and paste Jake Gyllenhaal’s dialogue from Nightcrawler for every status update:
Lou Bloom: “Why you pursue something is as important as what you pursue.”
Lou Bloom: “Do you know what fear stands for? False Evidence Appearing Real.”
Lou Bloom: “A friend is a gift you give yourself.”
Lou Bloom: “I’m a hard worker. I set high goals, and I’ve been told that I'm persistent. Now, I'm not fooling myself, sir. Having been raised with the self esteem movement so popular in schools, I used to expect my needs to be considered. But I know that these days, our culture no long caters to the job loyalty that could be promised to earlier generations. What I believe, sir, is that good thinks come to those who work their asses off. And that people such as yourself, who reached the top of the mountain didn’t just fall there…”
Lou Bloom: “My motto is, if you want to win the lottery, you have to make the money to buy the ticket.”
The amount of borkage on LinkedIn only compounds over time, since these posts both reflect the bankruptcy of the culture that produces them and performs them. The primary injunction of a capitalist society is to enjoy oneself, both in consumption and at work. This leads to a world of scuzzy and grim office cosplay, because it is not enough to simply show up and fulfill the responsibilities laid out in your job description. Everything in our freedom-filled nation is presented as a choice, so anyone at their job is traditionally understood to be living their fullest, most actualized life and should be grateful to the company for manifesting their best selves.
There’s this Let people enjoy things utilitarian logic that is increasingly ubiquitous and increasingly janky, even as neoliberalism experiences a strange simultaneous ascent and descent. It undermines the ideological notion that nothing anyone does can be bad as long as they’re enjoying themselves. You obsessively listen to Taylor Swift and watch baby-brain Marvel movies—well, as long as it makes you happy. Your job is protecting corporations from environmental consequences—well, as long as you love what you do. Individual satisfaction disconnected from its directly harmful consequences is perceived as the best way to live. If people en masse started complaining about how their job is alienating or actively makes the world a worse place, or realize how our culture is terribly vacuous, or start worrying about the Congo slaves mining cobalt, then the dead-eyed algorithmic drivel that undergirds capitalist realism starts to lose its entrancing effect.
Feudalism used the confessional to control its subjects with a latent and pervasive guilt so they would rely on the Church to relieve them. Capitalism turns us all into addicts who constantly need that new iPhone, that new flavor of chicken sandwich, that cushy corporate gig, so we network and chug the Kool-Aid from the corporate Styrofoam cup.
My stomach shrivels and my face gasps whenever I read these award speeches people give whenever they switch jobs; the ones where people feel compelled to thank their company’s recruiter and the supervisor who hired them and their old team for “an amazing experience these past nine months at Shopify.” But churning in the bogs of McKinseyite and HR manager gestation are posts packed with unrotting slime, a blurry block of endless words that say nothing but reveal everything.
These are LinkedIn lessons.
These people who spend precious hours of their dull lives writing this dreck must live in black and brittle skin, and possess absolutely nothing of worth to offer this world except these fabricated anecdotes presented as moralistic truths. They must have so much free time—lifeless and lightless—to write out these monologues with all the “storytelling” and stupid formatting and hashtags. There’s no way any of these are drafted in one take; I don’t want to comprehend all the delusional renditions that were typed out, proofread, and ultimately deleted before these freaks settled on the ones released to the public. I live a relatively mundane life and still cannot imagine devoting that much time and brainpower to clanking my fingertips on a keyboard until some utterly disposable drivel is unleashed into this sterile void.
It’s shit like:
13 lessons I learned while taking pictures of the smashburger I ordered from Shakeshack.
I listened to my 8-year-old son talk about locomotive wheel configurations for 10 minutes while scrolling through my iPad. Here’s what I learned about the importance of active listening.
Here’s what it’s like to be a consultant at Deloitte while struggling with incontinence.
Why Ted Kaczynski would have made a great blockchain developer: A thread.
What Having Violent Diarrhea Says About Your 401k: A thread.
How being a dominatrix helped me find a new career in mergers and acquisitions: A thread.
I recited a quote from Martin Luther King before I initated a mass-layoff over Zoom. Here’s why I don’t feel bad about giving myself a $9.2 million executive bonus.
I performed Chinese water torture on my middle school drama teacher and she revealed her 10 secrets to success.
I just watched my daughter overcome cerebral palsy to compete in her state track-and-field competition. Of course, I’m proud of her, but I’m more proud to be the first Black neurodivergent woman working as an Amazon warehouse supervisor in rural Alabama.
I pressured my wife of 25 years to divorce me by cheating on her with her mom and threatening to kidnap our daughter, just so I could prove I could win her back. This is what it taught me about salary negotiations.
I developed an empath software that will be available with each purchase of Neuralink. Here’s why I wouldn’t use it on baby Hitler if I had the chance.
Planning on not showing up to work after you pass away? Here’s 25 reasons why that mindset is DEAD WRONG.
I doubt AI could ever top the utter human lameness of LinkedIn posts.
This must be why my trying to advertise my books on LinkedIn hasn't resulted in any sales.
I stopped cleaning my fridge for three years to better understand supply chain management, here are four key take aways…