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A channel for writers on the internet. Share your work, respond to prompts, talk about writing & find cool stuff to read.
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Why LinkedIn Rewards Mediocrity
I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying. I like the premise of it, don’t get me wrong, a resume you don’t need to update all that often seems cool. Unfortunately though, its turned into the worst possible version of itself. It’s a place where people post half baked nonsense all for the sake of building a personal brand that nobody really cares about.
I log in and see constant posting that I can only describe as toxic mediocrity. A seemingly endless stream of posts that are over fluffed, over produced and ultimately say nothing.
(I considered posting a screenshot here but will save the folks in my 'network' from potential doxxing. The LinkedIn Lunatics subreddit has no shortage of curated examples.)
I like writing on the internet, probably more than most. That doesn’t mean that I think its useful to post vapid nonsense on a regular schedule just for the sake of posting.
You’ve probably seen the posts, both the reality and the memes. Generic advice disguised as a story. What my divorce taught me about B2B sales kind of stuff. It seems to be encouraged in much the same way that SEO content is encouraged. Yeah, it probably increases some metric around views or whatever but honestly, what for?
The vast majority of it falls into Toxic Mediocrity. It’s soft, warm and hard to publicly call out but if you’re not deep in the bubble it reads like nonsense. Unlike it’s cousins ‘Toxic Positivity’ and ‘Toxic Masculinity’ it isn’t as immediately obvious. It’s content that spins itself as meaningful and insightful while providing very little of either. Underneath the one hundred and fifty words is, well, nothing. It’s a post that lets you know that sunny days are warm or its better not to be a total psychopath. What is anyone supposed to learn from that.
What frustrates me the most about it is that the underlying premise of LinkedIn is still good. There’s some decent stuff on there in amongst all the noise. But, for whatever reason, that good stuff gets lost amongst a million posts of washed out nonsense.
Worse still is that those same lessons about ‘how to grow on LinkedIn’ encourage users to engage with this kind of content. Leave a pointless congratulatory comment and both you an the author will earn more professional network points.
As a result, the mysterious algorithm sees that same content as content that boosts time on site and the cycle continues. LinkedIn wants you on LinkedIn. Comments, likes and other engagement is a sign that you’re still online. It likely correlated well with clicks on ads and conversion to premium.
It annoys me in particular because I think people post this kind of stuff from a genuine place. They care about their careers and want to do better. I don’t want to shut that down. What is frustrating though is that unless you’re being hired by someone else who posts this way I am strongly convinced this behavior doesn’t work in your favor.
So what should someone do? Honestly, the best approach is to remember that LinkedIn is a website owned by Microsoft, trying to make money for Microsoft, based on time spent on the site. Nothing you post there is going to change your career. Doing work that matters might. Drawing attention to that might. Go for depth over frequency.
If writing online matters to you, you’re probably better off starting a blog and building things there. You’ll get less views and less engagement but there’s less temptation to post nonsense just for likes. You’re going to have a harder time getting people to stick around and read what you’re writing but that additional pressure raises the bar. Yeah, there are plenty of blogs that mostly go unread but even knowing that people will click away when they get bored should help distill your posts into content that matters.
Lots of people who write good content don’t live on LinkedIn, they might repurpose things for the platform but they exist elsewhere. If you’re more of a consumer than a producer and you want to help make things better the best thing you can do is reward the real stuff. Find those people who aren’t playing the game and promote that instead.
Or, failing all that, as with most nonsense on the internet, you can always close your laptop for the day and go outside.
https://www.elliotcsmith.com/linkedin-toxic-mediocrity/ 0 reply
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i’m from canada, but at the beginning of covid happened to be in LA
it was clearly time to leave, so i loaded my rv with snacks from erewhon and aimed for the desert, planning to take a route that avoided all the hot spots directly in my way
stop number one was death valley. i had a very heavy, ominous feeling while driving there. it felt like the world we all knew was about to die, and i was in mourning
but it also felt hopeful. like this could be a great catalyst for change. that i could use this for something positive regardless of what happened
it barely ever rains in that valley, but it was raining that day, and a rainbow appeared in the dunes. i pointed at it and yelled at everyone to look—what a rare sight! there were crowds of people, but they were all walking to their cars, away from the rainbow, and couldn’t hear me
i was happy to enjoy this moment alone, but it felt like another premonition. like i had a new world to reach, and would be going by myself
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