When we were younger, Instagram was a toxic ecosystem where adolescents going through the most challenging and confusing part of their lives pretended that everything was okay in the form of filtered, heavily edited pictures. From the girl whose stepdad took hands on parenting to an inappropriate level to sixteen-year-old kids embarrassed about their sexuality, and even the Kardashians- the whole thing was fake. We knew it was fake, but there was still a part of us that was insecure that we didn’t have a flat enough stomach or we weren’t invited to the party that looked better than it was in the pictures.
And while looking back at those things is funny now, it’s even funnier that there’s an adult social media app with the same climate, LinkedIn. If you don’t believe that adults are just children with FICO scores, I recommend you make a LinkedIn account. It’s 2015 Instagram for guys that haven’t been able to please their wives without a pill for half a decade, but instead of face-tuning their bodies, they’re face-tuning their professional achievements. And much like Instagram, it’s chock full of the best and brightest influencer minds from the Western world- like minstrel artist Justin Trudeau and hospitality entrepreneur Billy McFarland. While there’s some helpful information to be learned on the app that requires you to pay thirty bucks a month for a premium subscription (which most Gen Z girls only have to see if their ex is still thinking about them), most information circulating around LinkedIn is about as useful as Martin Maldonado’s offense.
For every post with advice you’ll see on your feed from a guy who worked his way up from janitor to COO, a crypto king is explaining how he was able to pay for ten different breast augmentations after making fourteen million dollars year over year. Who are you going to take tips from? The guy who served an unrealistic tenure at a company that, against all odds, survived four and a half recessions, or the guy who went from living in his Mom’s basement to getting drunk in Miami with the estranged Baldwin brother?
And look, the American dream is a toothpaste tube that we’re twisting to get every last drop of, and I love seeing small businesses succeed more than anyone, but I’m a little tired of the omitted details. Before she was America’s Next Top Convict, Elizabeth Holmes was a girl boss who clawed her way to the top, but nobody kissing her feet on LinkedIn mentioned her family’s connections or the fact that everybody’s favorite war criminal Henry Kissinger was on the board of her company. That’s all LinkedIn is- surface-level bull from tech entrepreneurs and your buddy from college with multiple DUIs flexing a corporate real estate hot streak. It’s late Summer, and graduates on LinkedIn, according to their posts, are excited to take on roles at their respective companies and grateful for those who have helped them along the way. We all have had to make that post before. And to those graduates, I say this, the hardest part about entering the workforce isn’t the dress code or the messages you receive past eight PM; it’s having to pretend that your boss is cool on LinkedIn.
