My son has ASD and is having a difficult time with all of the Linked in BS as he’s nearing graduation with a degree in mechanical engineering. Your piece is great - timely and so very true!
I have always despised it and refused to use it. If I can only get a job through LinkedIn, that job is not for me. LinkedIn lunatics on reddit is fun to peruse from time to time if you need reminders of how fucked the entire sites corporate worldview actually is.
This piece was phenomenal. Your way with words evokes more than a mental image but the feelings to accompany it as well. I had the biggest smile on my face while reading this. Wow. Thank you.
LinkedIn is business social media. All “social” media over any significant length of time is a net negative pursuit. LinkedIn presents in a far more cringey manner due to the expectation that somehow a business use case would eliminate blatant stupidity. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The gulf of reality between how corporate people really feel and how they act at work means they can't wait to "unmask" every night when they log off. It's similar to how autistic people unmask when they get home every day. It's a fake world, with its own glossary of bullshit and affectations, and it's hell for genuine souls to actually have original thoughts and things to say.
I always felt it was a platform where those who participated in vendor lunch and learns for the pizza could transcribe the experience into a next level skill up. I retired at 55 under a voluntary severance, which surprised my company because they presupposed the fear would be strong with my demographic group.
The voluntary severance included free career counseling for a period of time. Although my wife and I had sufficient means for me to stay retired, I had marketable skills and kids in college so I made use of the service. I was immediately told that I had to up my LinkedIn game. I was given templates and examples, which made me cringe. I reviewed posts from people whose careers I witnessed and was surprised at how many of their accomplishments my observation of their IRL career must have obviously missed. Instead of upping my game with the application, I deleted my dormant profile with all my work history and my connections. With age comes freedom.
Do be warned, however, that the career search process is now managed by algorithms and these non-feeling entities request loads of data including your LinkedIn profile url. It may only take an incomplete field to divert your application to the janitor bot. I secured an acceptable position after a short search without the help of LinkedIn. I am finding it hard watching my new coworkers obsessing over how to make the next promotion. The working world has become so exhausting.
Nice rant. Agreed. I can’t believe what the workplace has become. People have to behave like robots. (It didn’t use to be like this). Get creative and find something outside the corporate world.
This is an appropriate level of vitriol for LinkedIn.
I agree.
I loathe “LinkedIn voice,” the style of writing that provokes shivers and nausea. Please for once say something like a normal human being.
My son has ASD and is having a difficult time with all of the Linked in BS as he’s nearing graduation with a degree in mechanical engineering. Your piece is great - timely and so very true!
I wish your son all the best!
🙏
I have always despised it and refused to use it. If I can only get a job through LinkedIn, that job is not for me. LinkedIn lunatics on reddit is fun to peruse from time to time if you need reminders of how fucked the entire sites corporate worldview actually is.
Oh hell yes. I need to visit that subreddit - thank you.
This piece was phenomenal. Your way with words evokes more than a mental image but the feelings to accompany it as well. I had the biggest smile on my face while reading this. Wow. Thank you.
Wow thank you so much!
LinkedIn is business social media. All “social” media over any significant length of time is a net negative pursuit. LinkedIn presents in a far more cringey manner due to the expectation that somehow a business use case would eliminate blatant stupidity. Nothing could be further from the truth.
All of this rings very true.
The first thing I did after reading this was look you up on LinkedIn to CONNECT. Obviously.
I was waiting for you to drop this and damn it was a great read!
In Defense of the Commons (A Reply to Abolition)
No—
do not smash the camera.
Learn to look back.
Yes, the feed reeks of incense and fear.
Yes, the dialect is embalmed.
Yes, too many kneel for crumbs
and call it opportunity.
But abolition mistakes the altar
for the gathering.
LinkedIn is not a church.
It is a market square with bad acoustics
where cowards shout slogans
and builders trade tools quietly
in the corners.
You confuse the masks
with the faces beneath them.
The problem is not visibility.
The problem is who learned to speak first.
⸻
Not a cathedral—a bridge
Once, power hid behind oak doors.
Mahogany offices.
Country clubs and inherited phone numbers.
If you weren’t born adjacent to capital,
you stayed invisible.
Now a welder debates a CEO in public.
A founder in Nairobi finds a buyer in Des Moines.
A woman laid off at 52
writes plainly and is hired by someone
who remembers what work actually is.
That is not liturgy.
That is leakage.
That is hierarchy failing to seal itself.
Democracy is not clean.
It smells like desperation and hope
sharing the same sentence.
⸻
Yes, fear is monetized—but so is access
Every system taxes fear.
Guilds did.
Churches did.
Kings did.
LinkedIn merely charges admission
in public.
And unlike the old regimes,
it leaves fingerprints.
You can see who parrots.
You can see who builds.
You can see who hides behind jargon
and who speaks in verbs.
The algorithm does not force obedience.
It rewards consistency and clarity—
virtues long mistaken for compliance
by those who prefer obscurity
to accountability.
⸻
The dialect is optional
No one is forced
to say “thrilled”
or “honored”
or “humbled.”
They do it because they are afraid
of saying what they actually think.
Do not blame the square
because some arrive already kneeling.
The platform did not erase the soul—
it merely revealed
who outsourced theirs long ago.
⸻
The permanent audition cuts both ways
Yes, you are always visible.
But so are the gatekeepers.
The hiring manager cannot pretend
they didn’t see you.
The VC cannot claim ignorance.
The executive cannot hide behind silence.
The audition is mutual now.
And that terrifies those
accustomed to watching unseen.
⸻
You want abolition. I want literacy.
Burning the commons
only returns power
to rooms without windows.
I do not want silence.
I want better speech.
I want builders who speak plainly.
Leaders who admit uncertainty.
Founders who describe work
instead of branding suffering.
The answer to propaganda
is not darkness.
It is daylight
and people who know how to stand in it
without selling themselves.
⸻
Final refusal
Do not kill LinkedIn.
Kill the lie
that you must sound like them
to belong.
Refuse the dialect.
Refuse the halo-polishing.
Refuse gratitude for captivity.
Use the tool
without worshipping it.
Abolition is easy.
Presence with spine is harder.
That’s the work.
—JFM
The gulf of reality between how corporate people really feel and how they act at work means they can't wait to "unmask" every night when they log off. It's similar to how autistic people unmask when they get home every day. It's a fake world, with its own glossary of bullshit and affectations, and it's hell for genuine souls to actually have original thoughts and things to say.
Thanks for this. I hopped on to LinkedIn for precisely two days. I was quickly repulsed and retreated to my beautiful real-world hovel. Oops!
The vivid language is immaculate. Might just share on my LinkedIn 😂
Fantastic post, Antonio, really necessary, SOMEONE HAD TO SAY IT 😅
I always felt it was a platform where those who participated in vendor lunch and learns for the pizza could transcribe the experience into a next level skill up. I retired at 55 under a voluntary severance, which surprised my company because they presupposed the fear would be strong with my demographic group.
The voluntary severance included free career counseling for a period of time. Although my wife and I had sufficient means for me to stay retired, I had marketable skills and kids in college so I made use of the service. I was immediately told that I had to up my LinkedIn game. I was given templates and examples, which made me cringe. I reviewed posts from people whose careers I witnessed and was surprised at how many of their accomplishments my observation of their IRL career must have obviously missed. Instead of upping my game with the application, I deleted my dormant profile with all my work history and my connections. With age comes freedom.
Do be warned, however, that the career search process is now managed by algorithms and these non-feeling entities request loads of data including your LinkedIn profile url. It may only take an incomplete field to divert your application to the janitor bot. I secured an acceptable position after a short search without the help of LinkedIn. I am finding it hard watching my new coworkers obsessing over how to make the next promotion. The working world has become so exhausting.
Nice rant. Agreed. I can’t believe what the workplace has become. People have to behave like robots. (It didn’t use to be like this). Get creative and find something outside the corporate world.
This right here: "The ability to sit through meetings that prevent a decision becomes leadership." Uugh, and yes.
I don't want to be managed, I want to be met.