JULY 12 — Tired of emails I did not want, of LinkedIn constantly bombarding me with emails about people in new jobs, telling me to congratulate others for work anniversaries, I deleted my account.
Even if I still get headhunting enquiries (as recently as last year) it just didn’t seem to be worth the neverending LinkedIn spam.
It’s been 10 years and honestly I like my job. Getting headhunting messages was a nice way to feed my ego, like getting asked for dates despite already having a partner.
In the earlier days of the service, LinkedIn was a useful networking tool as it was meant to be about work.
Now it’s the corporate version of Facebook with too many people writing too many self-aggrandising posts that read like not especially well-crafted fictions.
LinkedIn turns 20 years old this year, having amassed around 875 million users in that time.
It’s become a running joke about how many LinkedIn users make up stories too ludicrous to believe though this year’s LinkedIn fail award must go to the consultant who wrote a post about Hitler’s “charismatic qualities”.
While I understand that people do feel the need to self-market in a bid to create or attract opportunities it wears down on you after a while.
I love my internet personality friends but I am tired of over 90 per cent of their posts being about promoting some product or service.
Give me the cat pictures. Show me actual video of things that made you happy or things that actually happened, not something scripted that you sent over to your client for approval.
Of course Instagram is worse than other platforms when it comes to a lack of authenticity — where people feel pressured to paint ideal pictures of themselves and their lives.
I miss the old days of blogs when, yes, people overshared, but at least people were talking about what they actually felt and about going or doing things because they wanted to, not because of a brand endorsement.
What I also missed is being able to go on social media without having to read what I called “copywriter speak” — that over-polished, monotonal style you see in emails or long twitter threads.
Too many people have been reading from the same manual of copywriting tricks all created to include “calls to action” but instead of selling e-books, the same marketing tactics are used to sell courses, food, services or the notion that whoever spouts the great advice of the day is some sort of expert.
It’s also jarring when email newsletters or spam are written in an overly familiar tone.
You’re not my high school BFF, you don’t get to “how you doin’” me in your email headers.
I think we’ve gone past trying to pretend to be what we’re not or pushing something we don’t believe in, or cannot truly vouch for.
You know who pretends something or someone is better than what they are? Scammers.
We know actors are pretending on stage; that the stories fiction authors tell are made up. So why must we tolerate false narratives that pretend to be otherwise, whether on social media or the public sphere?
As in the case of Chinese citizens smashing a robot used to take appointments in lieu of an actual person, I think the appetite for real interaction instead of manufactured personas will always be there.
Here’s to real people, real voices and less of a need to promote facades as a way of life and a way of keeping us in the neverending capitalist consumer loop.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
