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Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

elliotcsmith.com

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Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#221

Post by CER10TY »

olex wrote: post #120
cpursley wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it leads to someone purchasing a solution that solves a need, how is that zero value?

If someone has a legitimate need, they will look for a solution in appropriate locations (directories, search, magazines, what have you) and do not need someone to scream their marketing blurbs into the void in hopes of being noticed.

Or, far more likely, they'll reach out to someone in their network. To land in that network, you have to market your services. LinkedIn is somewhat useful for that, but less so nowadays.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#222

Post by amanaplanacanal »

simianwords wrote: post #192
alansammarone wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Your project might be good or bad, if it's bad/low quality/low effort and you take sales away from a better option by abusing human biases (such as recency bias), then you're destroying (potential, not actual) value.

What if your product is good and you want people to purchase it? Why not let the customers decide what is good and bad - they have agency.

How would they even discover that though? Every single customer would have to buy both products and test for themselves. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#223

Post by Levitz »

simianwords wrote: post #192
alansammarone wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Your project might be good or bad, if it's bad/low quality/low effort and you take sales away from a better option by abusing human biases (such as recency bias), then you're destroying (potential, not actual) value.

What if your product is good and you want people to purchase it? Why not let the customers decide what is good and bad - they have agency.

Then they wouldn't need convincing?

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#224

Post by cootsnuck »

Henchman21 wrote: post #212
cootsnuck wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what are the people with worthwhile products and services supposed to do then? Just not engage in marketing? Sincere question.

Yes, that's my take. I'm of the opinion we should outlaw advertising. If your product is good, word will spread via word-of-mouth. But then, I don't exist to do business. Acquiring profit isn't my goal. Acquiring status, rank, or advantage over my fellows isn't my goal. Its the goal of those we let run roughshod over the rest of us justified by phrases like "well its just human nature to be greedy; nothing to be done…

I mean I don't disagree. One of my favorite quotes I've been saying for years is "Advertising shits in your brain."

But at the same time I think only relying on word of mouth is a bit biased against people who aren't starting with an advantage of a pre-existing network for whatever worthwhile service they could be offering.

That being said, plenty of successful service based freelancers will tell you most of their business is from referrals at a certain point. It's just hard to get to that point. (I say this as someone who only gets business from referrals right now, but wants that to not be the case.)

Yea idk, I totally agree with you in spirit. But I care about practicality and I have found worthwhile services from solo-freelancers via marketing.

Good marketing doesn't have to equal garbage. But I feel ya. Most marketing is mind numbing.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#225

Post by Levitz »

simianwords wrote: post #203
goodpoint wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of advertising is making the "free market agents" less rational. The most popular product is rarely the best.

No its about product discovery. It is in fact essential to a rational market. Imagine you create a really good product. You actually believe in it and you think people would want to buy it. Please tell me how you will practically get it noticed? I would like actual practical advice.

In the exact same way as if you had a godawful product and you want to sell it.

Promote it, talk about it on social media, possibly contract some marketing services, find out who is more prone to purchasing it and focus on that group, etc etc.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#226

Post by amanaplanacanal »

simianwords wrote: post #195
alansammarone wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No so much "stupid", just full of biases and somewhat lazy. This is a well-researched and documented fact. Knowingly abusing these biases to get them to buy or use something that they either don't need - or, worse, buying a low quality/low effort product when better alternatives exist - that's extremely detrimental. That's how we end up with the enshittification of everything.

Yes there are biases sometimes and it can get exploited and this is an exception that proves the rule. But the rule is that people know what they want to buy and know what they are getting into. You are trying to get in between by suggesting you know more than the buyer and seller.

They mostly don't know what they are getting into though. You can't trust advertising, obviously. You can't trust reviews. You have no way to tell if there is actually a better product than the one you are seeing the ad for. You better hope there is a good return policy.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#227

Post by ohdeargodno »

simianwords wrote: post #176
ohdeargodno wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convincing people to buy your rotten meat is value creation! Convincing people to buy a bridge is value creation! Convincing people to buy your Teflon pan that will seep into the environment for centuries is value creation! Because after all, nothing else matters. Value creation. Value. Creation. Consequences ? Thoughtfulness ? That's for the dumbasses not creating _value_

Not sure what you mean. You think people are inherently stupid and end up buying things they will regret. It’s not always like that and you are removing agency from the person purchasing the product.

Why do you accuse me of things I've not said, and drift away from the extremely stupid thing you said ? Value creation is not the only thing that matters, and has extremely harmful results if taken to its extremes. Trying to put the blame on "people" and their "agency" is such a destructive behavior that it shouldn't be tolerated. People buying things does not absolve you of the responsibility of creating said product, or of the process used to make them buy your crap. If your marketing process actively makes society worse, you're responsible for it. If your product has consequences for centuries, you're responsible for it. If your advertisement for a gun is "hey it makes really nice holes in your shooting target. And the neighbor you don't like", you're not off the hook when it gets used to shoot someone. In the same way, if your advertisement technique results in hundreds of thousands of people reading your shitty content that actively makes them dumber, you're not off the hook for making society dumber, even if it "creates value"

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#228

Post by donkers »

olex wrote: post #120
cpursley wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it leads to someone purchasing a solution that solves a need, how is that zero value?

If someone has a legitimate need, they will look for a solution in appropriate locations (directories, search, magazines, what have you) and do not need someone to scream their marketing blurbs into the void in hopes of being noticed.

And marketing folks would be involved in getting the product into directories, search, magazines, etc. What is it that you think marketing people do? They don't write ad copy all day.

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#229

Post by ohdeargodno »

simianwords wrote: post #192
alansammarone wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Your project might be good or bad, if it's bad/low quality/low effort and you take sales away from a better option by abusing human biases (such as recency bias), then you're destroying (potential, not actual) value.

What if your product is good and you want people to purchase it? Why not let the customers decide what is good and bad - they have agency.

>Why not let the customers decide what is good and bad - they have agency.

They can't. Your shit blogspam is all over the internet. You've been using LLMs to advertise it everywhere. You've been using bots to post fake reviews online. You've been selling them on platforms that don't give a shit about customers and will never take returns. Either by being first or having more money, or time to blow into it, you can easily drown out any potential threats. The only way another product comes out on top is by doing the same things as you are.

Which is fun and all, but there's external consequences to this behavior. The internet is worse, product reviews are worse, and overall, you're destroying trust in society.

But sure, "agency".

Re: Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

#230

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

hliyan wrote: post #118
fhd2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think like that too, or at least used to. I got pretty far by just doing good work - or so I thought. Growing up in a rich country and getting a bit lucky to be found and promoted by the right people probably mattered as much, if not more, than my talents or skills. There's probably thousands of people better at anything I can do but less well off. I think the only reason I'm better off than them is that I had more…

The way I look at this is that the Adam Smith-ian free market makes the implicit assumption that market information (pricing, quality) disseminates via neutral, unbiased channels. However, the fact that influencing those channels is itself a commodity that is available on the market, paradoxically affects the operation of the market adversely. If supplier A has a product of quality Q at price P, and supplier B has a…

None of those work, because they inevitably become vectors of the problem they're supposed to solve.

This is yet another disproof of the nonsense belief that markets reward efficiency, which is good for consumers.

Markets are fundamentally about gaining advantage over others, and it's far easier and cheaper to gain advantage through manipulation and questionable forms of persuasion than by any other means.

Which is why everyone and everything is now drowning in toxic sludge.

Markets, lacking any sense of the collective good, inevitably produce a tragedy of the commons for the benefit of a small number of the most successful, persuasive, and least ethical predatory manipulators.

This is supposed to be "rational", but that framing is itself a manipulation.

There's nothing rational about drowning in toxic sludge. It's a specific moral policy choice, with predictably negative consequences that have played out over and over again.

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