To hate LinkedIn with a passion?

[Thepeopleversuswork]

I know, I know, it's the only acceptable "professional" social media network and its essential for finding jobs and for building your brand and building connections bla bla bla. I use it for a living and I recommend clients use it.

But its just professional sycophancy dressed up as "insight" with a very transparent veneer of "authenticity". People post self-serving shit designed to suck up to their boss/shareholders or be picked up by algorithms and people line up to say "so insightful" and other platitudes. A tiny fraction of the things posted on LI are genuine or thoughtful. They are all just corporate drivel disguised as commentary.

For all their toxicity and addictive qualities (and God knows I hate Elon Musk) at least X, Facebook and Insta are, dare I say it, real?

There is some BS on there. But in my field (and this from snooping on the pages of others I've worked or currently work with) their profiles are fairly accurate. There is a bit of self-aggrandisement going on, but no more so than on their CVs.

@TheAmusedQuail it isn't so much the profiles I object to its the awful posts on themes which posters consider to be of interest to their sector.

Long boring blow-jobbery of someone making a speech at a conference which passes under the guise of "insight" but is actually a thinly veiled attempt to get a job.

If you are saying that images/ content are not at all stage managed on other social media then I’d say you were in La La Land. LinkedIn is as genuine as the next social media. i.e. not very genuine.

As a journalist covering a specific industry I do find it useful to see what issues people are talking about and any innovations or good practice they are boasting about, and who is putting themselves out there and therefore might be up for a quote or an opinion piece. But yes the majority is just “what a great day at xxx event, so amazing to catch up with Same Old Names and benefit from their insight into the sector”

If you don't like it, don't use it, simple...

@NazeLife yes it absolutely has utility in certain sectors (I use it a lot for this purpose). There's just something incredibly insincere about the posts you see.

I have to use it. It's literally in my job description.

I have to agree with you. Unfortunately I need to be on it too, otherwise I wouldn’t be.

In that case, use it but scroll past the meaningless posts, not sure it's that difficult.

I hide people who post meaningless shite and just follow those people who actually know what they’re talking about and share subject-related content. It’s the main way I keep up to date with the industry but I’ve worked hard to curate my feed.

I despise it so much, whenever I have to go on there I feel a bit sick. Probably why I have never made any meaningful professional connections on it!

@jbm16

In that case, use it but scroll past the meaningless posts, not sure it's that difficult.

The "meaningless posts" are what I have to interact with.

I’m with you OP! I have to use it too but the frequent eye rolling it causes can give me a migraine.

Of particular annoyance is the line spacing on some posts, presumably designed to make you think a great piece of wisdom is about to be immediately downloaded into your soul.

Into your soul.

Just like this.

And then the ‘incredible wisdom’ turns out to be a perfectly common sense solution to a very ordinary problem - something like ‘if you want to retain your staff, you have to be nice to them’. Oh really? Wow, that had never occurred to me! But then everyone leaps on the comments with handclaps, praising the poster for their messiah-like wisdom.

There’s a good account on X called ‘LinkedIn lunatics’ and it shares the best of the worst.

It’s exactly like facebook and instagram. Just work related instead of life related. All dressed up posts showing best part of someone’s life for likes.

It's not compulsory. I'm managing to have a perfectly successful career in IT without being on LinkedIn.

Look up LinkedIn Lunatics on Reddit and lean in

I love how mental it is. It's absolute useless lately, but good laugh sometimes.
Yes to linkedin lunatics😂

The stray dog that the poster so selflessly fed in the street with his last £3 turned out to be the CEO of the company he was about to interview at. What are the chances! He got the job!

10 lessons leaders can learn about feeding stray dogs equally or something.

Here’s what my father’s horrific cancer death taught me about b2b SaaS sales…

Nah Instagram is waaaaay funnier

I'm with you. The worst posts are the ones that are

spaced

out

like

this

And the virtue-signalling ones that say things like 'I told a high paying client where to go because they were rude to a member of my team'.

That said, there can be some good content on there. You just need to wade through some nonsense!

These are great, thank you!

But honestly so much more interesting than the drivel I have to post/edit/read in my job.

Definitely YANBU.

I have someone in my feed who does crap restaurant reviews (he works in a completely different field), always accompanied by a selfie of him with a slightly depressed looking waiter who clearly just wants to get on with their job.

Someone else posts such insights as 'invoices should be paid on time' and 'resolve customer queries quickly'. His boss then comments at how clever and insightful he is and that he should be an influencer.

Someone else wrote paragraphs and paragraphs about issues with recruiting. Then at the end, the proposed solution was to use him because he's really good.

Most of LinkedIn is meaningless now, it's turning into Facebook.

How do you hide them?! Do you have to unfolllow?

I suspect I'm being thick!