Why LinkedIn is so Cringe-worthy

Social media has accelerated the waves of idiocy hitting our organisations. Now every moron has a platform. Anyone can claim to be a ‘leadership guru’ or a ‘culture change expert’, and the algorithms create echo chambers to reinforce our misguided beliefs about organisational life.

Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash

LinkedIn, the leading platform for work-related nonsense, is awash with daily idiotic posts with titles like: “The Top Ten Things Great Leaders Do”. Invariably, this content has no credible foundation; it’s just click-bait for the dopamine of ‘likes’, the illusion of social validation and the hope that ‘followers’ can be monetised somehow. Each post gets liked by hundreds or even thousands of people robotically accepting this complete drivel as if it were great wisdom handed down by venerable sages on stone tablets.

Occasionally, I comment, suggesting that the content is entirely made up and stupid. But deep down, I know I’m wasting my time because people want to believe this rubbish is true. As we’ve seen, humans have evolved to dislike uncertainty and are inevitably drawn to simplistic representations of the world. What we believe to be reality is entirely constructed by our minds, a highly simplified version of the world, complete with all our biases.

Exploring this constructed reality, British filmmaker Adam Curtis released a short film in 2016 entitled Living in an Unreal World(1). The film addresses various issues, from the hidden influence of global financial corporations to powerful social media algorithms’ mass manipulation of our minds. In it, the narrator describes the unreal nature of work:

“You are managed with performance targets and measured outcomes. But as you sit in the glass-walled offices, you know the targets are manipulated and fake. And the managers know that you know. But you all sit there and pretend it is objective and rational.”

Social media, particularly LinkedIn, amplifies all the other sources of work-related nonsense we suffer from. The deafening sound of mindless conformity drowns out the few dissenting voices or original thinkers. And there are reasons for most of us to tread carefully. Amy Edmondson is a professor at Harvard Business School, where she specialises in the study of workplace communication. She describes how we apply implicit rules to communication at work based on the fact we have what she describes as two jobs - the job we get paid for and the job of trying to look good.

LinkedIn has become an online extension of the office, where risks of going against accepted wisdom are high and where challenges to nonsense can be misinterpreted in front of a vast audience. Most people won’t risk posting their honest views any more than they would risk voicing dissenting opinions openly in the office. Even worse, on social media, a record of any mistakes is potentially permanent and visible to current and prospective employers. This is why exhortations to “bring your whole self to work” are hilariously misguided. Doing that would be incredibly risky for most of us. On other social media sites, people worry that their bosses might see the real them in all their messy glory. On LinkedIn, people craft their carefully staged identities specifically to be seen by bosses.

It’s amusing to see how people on the platform jump on trends to try and make themselves look good. After the COVID-19 epidemic, words such as ‘authenticity’ and ‘vulnerability’ began to be used more frequently. This led to waves of highly unauthentic over-sharing, often featuring posts starting with statements such as: “I’ve thought long and hard about sharing this on LinkedIn but finally decided to go for it”. Good for you, yawn.

Writing in a blog(2) on the London School of Economics website, Shani Orgad, a Professor in the Department of Media and Communications, identifies three main ‘genres’ of vulnerability self-promotion posts. The first is Triumph over Tragedy - where posters share their vulnerabilities in the context of overcoming them, portraying themselves as resilient and motivated. These often include annoyingly cheesy quotes on self-belief.

The second is Snap, where users focus on having reached a breaking point where they are unwilling to continue in a toxic workplace. Pictures in medical settings often accompany these posts. The image is of the brave victim courageously sharing their terrible experience. A cynic might suggest that this could be a handy way to explain being fired.

The third is Subversive Commentary on Self-Promotion. These posts usually use subversive language to parody the overwhelming tendency of LinkedIn users to promote themselves constantly. These often start with introductions like: “I’m thrilled to announce,” followed by news of being laid off or rejected for multiple roles. Orgad says, “Vulnerability has become an iteration of digital self-promotion. Vulnerability posts tend to attract attention, likes, shares and comments, and are consequently promoted by LinkedIn’s algorithm.”

One of the most notorious vulnerability posts on LinkedIn went viral in 2022(3) when marketing company CEO Braden Wallace shared a selfie showing him crying after making two members of staff redundant. “This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share,” he wrote before going on to make it all about him. The first comment on his post was a single word: Muppet. The platform’s users quickly dubbed him “The Crying CEO”. Wallace became the poster boy for what behavioural insights expert Helen Jambunathan(4) calls the “LinkedIn cringe”. Thankfully, some people on LinkedIn use this nonsense for comedy value. I particularly like this post from Andrew Tobin∗, a US-based Creative Director:

My 4-year old froze on stage at her first ballet recital.

“I failed” she told me after the show.

I looked at her heartbroken, with tears in my eyes.

“No. I failed you. But today, you've given me more than I could've ever asked for. You gave me a sad kid story to post on LinkedIn.”

“Link what?” she asked.

“LinkedIn”, I replied. “A place where depressing personal anecdotes involving imaginary children are posted and mined for engagements in order to boost one’s own professional identity.”

She looked at me, confused.

“But dad–”

I cut her off.

“Shhhh.”

Social media platforms have their uses, but we must collectively become more aware of their dark sides. The short-form content and algorithms feed on our love of over-simplification and create the veneer of credibility from the social currency of likes. It simply reinforces existing belief systems. Most of the content is self-promotion in disguise. This is not the wisdom of the crowd; it's the complete opposite. You won’t find it here if you seek genuinely disruptive ideas or innovation. A far better option would be to travel, meet new people and explore what interesting companies are doing in sectors that are very different from yours. Something about a marked change in an environment seems to get the creative juices flowing.

Excerpts from Magnetic Nonsense: A Short History of Bullshit at Work and How to Make it Go Away

Need any help sorting out nonsense in your organisation? www.disruptionspace.co

∗ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjtobin/

1. Living in an Unreal World, Adam Curtis, 2016. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07d5yh3

2. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/05/01/why-is-vulnerability-trending-on-linkedin/

3. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/ceo-linkedin-layoffs-crying-selfie-b2142626.html

4. https://www.helenjambunathan.com/