LinkedIn Bullshit

by Michel Heitzmann

© Michel Heitzmann - These are cows, actually, statues of cows in Dallas, TX

LinkedIn is noise. Extraordinary, relentless, self-congratulatory noise. Everyone is broadcasting. Nobody is listening. The feed moves and moves and nothing actually happens. I have been trying to understand what any of it is for and the best I can come up with is this: it makes people feel like they exist. Which is fine. We all need that. But there are quieter ways.

I also suspect that a meaningful portion of the reactions are not reactions at all. They are transactions. Someone tapping a thumbs up out of pure pity, quietly hoping the poster will notice and return the favour. A vast informal economy of reciprocal validation running just below the surface of every post. You scratch my ego, I'll scratch yours.

Which brings me to the content itself.

Advertising. In the time it took me to write the previous paragraph, I scrolled past a bank, some people claiming expertise in energy management, another bank, yet another bank, a social media agency, a fourth bank, a wealth office, an office real estate company and a man who wants to optimise my finances. How can this possibly be effective? I could, purely in the spirit of charity, click on every single ad and help the poor soul at each of those companies dress up a PowerPoint slide about campaign performance. The reality is that none of it moves me in the slightest. It looks less like targeting and more like carpet bombing. Throw enough at the wall and call the one thing that sticks a strategy.

The Joy Reporters. This week I visited a supplier. The atmosphere was remarkable. There was a clear intention behind how the space was built and run. I felt things. Two hundred people reacted. The Joy Reporter does not need news. They need a feeling, something that happened, a moment of human connection that can be stretched into two hundred words and a lesson. The supplier visit. The coffee with a former colleague. The afternoon walk that changed everything. The point is never the supplier.

The Wisdom Dispensers. Being present does not mean being available to everyone all of the time. That is the whole post. Bold font, a line break for dramatic effect, two million impressions. The Wisdom Dispenser has understood something the rest of us have not: the shorter the insight, the less you can argue with it. Nobody can disagree with a sentence that means four different things depending on your mood.

The Concerned Citizens. An old proverb says: when a fool is given a throne, the throne does not gain dignity, the room loses it. Fifty comments. Twelve reposts. The Concerned Citizen does not need to propose a solution. They need a metaphor, a quote from someone dead, and enough ambiguity that the post works regardless of which side of the argument you are on. Half the feed is posting about how the world is ending. The other half is posting about how it is finally being fixed. Both are talking about the same person. Neither is changing a single vote. They are performing for an audience that already agrees with them. Someone is genuinely worried about the Strait of Hormuz closing. If the people directly involved cannot solve it, I am not sure what we are expecting the LinkedIn crowd to do about it.

The Planet Savers. Somewhere in Southeast Asia, a landscape that had been stripped bare for decades came back to life without any human intervention whatsoever. 🌱NATURE First. 🌱 Zero INTERFERENCE. 🌱 The Power of a CLICK. Change your default search engine. The Planet Saver has found a way to save the world that costs them nothing and takes about four minutes to write. The leaf emoji is doing the moral heavy lifting.

The AI Evangelists. AI is going to change everything. AI is going to take your job. AI is going to cure cancer. AI is going to end humanity. AI made me write this post in four minutes. The AI Evangelist discovered the technology sometime in the last two years and has been processing the experience publicly ever since. Every week brings a new list: the ten prompts that will transform your workflow, the five AI tools you are not using but should be, the one thing ChatGPT told them that their therapist never could. The posts are confident, urgent, and always slightly breathless. They read like someone who just got off a rollercoaster and needs you to know it was fast. Somewhere, an AI crawler is already ingesting all of it, learning the pattern, and preparing to generate ten more just like it by now.

The Achievement Announcers. New office in the city centre. From the kitchen table, to a borrowed desk, to this. The journey. The hustle. The emoji of a person lifting weights for reasons nobody has explained. A prestigious consulting firm in the bio, because what you used to be is at least as important as what you are now. Actually, on LinkedIn, it is more important. The ex-badge is the whole point. Former top-tier bank. Former big-four consultancy. Former household tech name, working backwards through a career like a greatest hits tour that peaked some years ago.

The Title Hoarders. Founder | Board Advisor | UN Expert | Global Forum Delegate | Committee Member | AI Strategist | Award Recipient 2023. Seven roles, three acronyms nobody can expand, one award from a body that also gave out four hundred other awards that year. Then there is the category of person who lists every prestigious institution they have ever been adjacent to in their headline, just in case you missed it the first time. And the subset who describe themselves as Highly Skilled, Visionary, Bang-on, Fantastic and Passionate, every adjective self-applied, not one awarded by another human being.

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The Formula People. LinkedIn has quietly produced an entire genre of headline that follows the exact same structure: I help [group] [verb] their [noun] so they can [dream]. I help professionals break through their limiting beliefs so they can build the career they actually deserve. I help teams do more without hiring more. I help people look forward to the week ahead. Someone promised to fix the relationship people have with Monday mornings. On a professional network. And thousands connected with them.

The Cosmic Ones. Exploring the next frontier of human consciousness through technology, creativity and ancient wisdom. Regenerative thinking meets indigenous knowledge systems. Bridging quantum possibility with grounded organisational practice. At some point the headline stopped being a job description and became a spiritual manifesto. I have enormous respect for the ambition. I have no idea what any of these people actually do on a Tuesday.

After writing all of the above I looked at my own LinkedIn headline. It said: I connect leadership, AI and sustainability so we can stay clear and act on what's next. I had apparently been one of them the whole time. A Formula Person with delusions of clarity.

I considered changing it to Former Award-Winning Bullshitter. Then I thought better of it as there is an award mentioned.

It now says: Building quiet things. Perhaps, relevant.

I'm still thinking about whether that's any better. But at least it's honest.

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