How Linkedin stole our humour (and self-awareness)

LinkedIn is perhaps the most objectionable of social media sites. The desire to celebrate human achievement is understandable, but the platform has become the home of the humble brag.
3 mins read

When last were you thrilled? And how about delighted? To my mind, these words are part of the nomenclature best saved for the now defunct newspaper classified ads. 

The Zulu family are delighted to announce the birth of Themba, first grandchild to Margaret and Bonginkosi. Mr and Mrs Ronald Smith are thrilled to announce the engagement of their daughter Julia to Sim – only son of the late Fiona and Phil Green. 

In the yellowed days of an ink-based past, it was always interesting to pore over the “hatches, matches and dispatches” pages to see who’d entered the world, and who’d left it.

Nine times out of 10, you knew none of them, but clocking who’d made an especially good match was intriguing. Likewise, there was a certain fascination in someone having been so loved and admired in life that their deaths took up reams of column space. 

I recall always reading The Star’s classifieds section at breakfast as a child. It was a real-time anthropological study of the people of Johannesburg: the social strata, shifting demographics (children having departed for London or Tel Aviv was a clue to what was coming), the tackily trendy names that gripped generations of Joburg parents. 

It was all there in thrilling, delightful, tiny inky text.

Now, those newspaper pages have gone, along with movie times, cartoons and horoscopes – and, speaking like an ageing person, we’re worse off for it. 

Today, we’ve become accustomed to an amorphous digital morass: baby announcements arrive in the form of tedious 27-page “birthing story” Instagram posts, and community deaths are relayed via WhatsApp group messages or, for the six people still on that platform, Facebook.

This social media might be instant, but it has simultaneously disconnected us. Algorithms mean we only see what is thrilling and delightful in our echo chambers.  And I guarantee that Temu ads for travel pillows are not it. 

The humble brag

Here, the gold-medal winner for banal social evolution belongs to the kingdom of LinkedIn. 

In the past, we’d glance at the careers page of the Sunday Times for nine seconds and briefly register that someone at SA Breweries had been appointed group head of shared services. In those heady days, it was a universally acknowledged truth that promotions were only interesting to two groups of people: a) the newly promoted person’s mother; and b) those who had to report to that overly promoted person.

LinkedIn has changed that, super-charging those forgettable announcements with aggressive humble brag, with a dash of slavish sycophancy.  

The overlords of LinkedIn will have it that even the most minor of job tweaks (Sarah Buitendach added Excel to her set of skills) is worthy of a post and gushing commendations from people you’ve never met, congratulating you with heart emojis for your newly discovered spreadsheet supremacy.

You’re thrilled to announce a new role, delighted to say you have just completed a six-week Harvard-style course in Change Management; humbled to be mentoring the interns. Quick – pop the Dom Perignon! Or rather, how about getting off LinkedIn and doing some actual work instead.

The only thing worse, actually, is the tumult of LinkedIn and business “influencers” who keep this quagmire of self-aggrandisement ticking over with their posting of modern-day business parables and motivational quotes. 

Was your 600-word testimony about what the millennials in your business taught you completely necessary? And why, indeed, has all self-consciousness been sacrificed on the altar of personal brand-building and self-deception?

Now, I do concede that LinkedIn is a valuable tool if you’re looking to hire or get hired. But beyond the raison d’être of being a big jobs noticeboard, it has morphed into the most hollow, humourless and vexing faux environment. 

Yet somehow, this “business platform” and its acolytes have, unnervingly, convinced more than 1-billion people that the world of career development, business jargon and axiomatic “learnings” deserve their own universe. 

You can see where it comes from, of course, and that isn’t entirely detestable: the human desire for success and acknowledgment is at the heart of LinkedIn’s success. But there is no world in which this justifies endless inane posts about company culture and work style.

Perhaps most shameful of all, there are companies that spend vast amounts of their budgets producing dull content to feed the monster, and then spend money promoting it. You’ve seen it: your boss talking awkwardly about why we need women in the company because they “think differently”. Mayday! 

It’s a lacerating indictment on our culture and self-awareness. Whereas once we had print classifieds revealing the micro-machinations of our lives, LinkedIn suggests we’ve become a dull, self-promoting, worthy and, most importantly, humourless society. Thrilling and delightful indeed.

Top image: Animation. Currency.

Sarah Buitendach

With a sharp eye for design, Sarah has an unparalleled sense of shifting cultural, artistic and lifestyle sensibilities. As the former editor of Wanted magazine, founding editor of the Sunday Times Home Weekly, and many years in magazines, she is the heartbeat of Currency’s pleasure arm.

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