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Why is LinkedIn so cringe?

trungphan.substack.com

181–190 of 290 posts

Re: Why is LinkedIn so cringe?

#181

I feel like TeamBlind is the exact opposite of LinkedIn -- no positivity, no one cares about mission or whatever, the #1 thing is TC and WLB, and everyone is anonymous. And yet its posts are much more honest, candid and just overall useful than those of LinkedIn.

Indeed, they are total opposite. I wonder if these are the same people who show different faces. I wonder about these people on LinkedIn, either they are total hypocrites on LinkedIn, or they totally buy on the corporate BS. I'm not sure which is worse! I've had a career change recently and I joined a big American corp. I wasn't familiar with this type of environment. The level of bullshit and hypocrisy there is amaz…

I think everyone's mostly faking it. At least in my experience even the people posting this drivel on LinkedIn and brown nosing for a promotion are totally normal and self-aware when you develop an actual outside-of-work connection with them. I'm also not sure whether this is better or worse!

Re: Why is LinkedIn so cringe?

#184

LinkedIn shares something with Facebook, in that it is a giant clusterfuck of additional bullshit on top of a few key features, and a critical mass of participants, that fulfill the promise of social networking. 100% owe my career to LinkedIn, despite having never posted or commented or liked or joined a damn thing. The access to people and information is, alas, worth the cringe.

Very true. It’s a lot of bullshit but just filter the noise and extract the good bits

Re: Why is LinkedIn so cringe?

#187
post #176

I actually like the Linkedin vibe. It’s like an alternate reality where everyone is always congratulating everyone else on their accomplishments! And shipping stuff! And investing in their careers! Seriously though, for some reason all this “The Office” stuff would be awkward and cringey in real life, but in an online format it works? Somehow? It’s similar to how an internet argument can be often way more rage induci…

There’s a casual disregard for real relationships that gets me.

I’ve seen more than once some poor bastard that gets laid off from a good company end up at shitcorp, inc, and some jackass will cluelessly make a dumb comment.

“Hey Bud, it didn’t know there was enough money in Account Management at Shitco to leave the VP gig at Google! #inspiring #success”

Re: Why is LinkedIn so cringe?

#188
post #7

LinkedIn probably has a net benefit for your career by keeping up to date and checking the messages once a week, but I cannot get over the awkwardness of seeing total BS stories and thousands of replies saying "YES! AMEN!". "I was running late to an interview this morning but stopped to help a man who fell off of his bike and fixed it up for him. Afterwards I bought him a coffee and talked about life. He mentioned ho…

Yeah the changes over the last few years make it seem like facebook. hopefully the powers that be will notice and come up with some plan to limit such silly interactions on what should be a professional platform. I reported some overtly political posts on there more than once and nothing ever came of it.

Re: Why is LinkedIn so cringe?

#189
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shameless plug of my open source LinkedIn clone written in a custom Lisp dialect. it's free but we offer cost effective white glove support for businesses and cloud hosted solutions

I want to see LinkedIn written in Prolog. We could call it "Logical Connections."

Brainfuck would be more appropriate.

Re: Why is LinkedIn so cringe?

#190

I never understood why I always got so depressed reading LinkedIn, until I read The Gervais Principle by Venkatesh Rao. And then I saw that LinkedIn consists almost entirely of clueless people talking to other clueless people, and exclusively in posturetalk (these are Rao’s terms - “clueless” means something specific). And if you haven’t read The Gervais Principle, I highly recommend it, although it may bum you out.

Say what you want, the smartest people I know as a professional are on LinkedIn, however they, like me, never post anything, it's just a profile to point people at for a quick overview of your professional experience. However the people that post on there all the time, okay I'll agree with you just don't throw everyone in the same dumpster fire please.
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