Dear LinkedIn: Your AIs Are Tired

Everyone doing business is (still) on LinkedIn. But I seriously doubt that there is one person in the world loving, yet even liking, LinkedIn as a platform. It is the usual circle-jerk where people praise themselves for launched projects and achievements and where people share business-wisdom from surprisingly spontaneous everyday-situations. It stinks. But what is even more funny (or tragic, I don’t know) about it, is that people more and more rely on AI to prompt their posts. So in the end LinkedIn is becoming a platform where AIs can meet & greet and read each other’s outputs — so it is becoming less human but still about human “business” relations. I mean what is the point exactly. Sure there is always money to be made but if an entire platform shifts to AI content creation (and even comment production by AI en masse) it kinda deserves to achieve its final form as a perpetual motion machine of meaninglessness. Nothing on LinkedIn is authentic. We are fake-happy, fake-sad, fake-outraged and fake-surprised to feed the narrative of our personal brand. Everything just to appear clever, mindful and successful. But what if we’re trying too hard and even outsource our own voice to AI? How can this be authentic? Isn’t this rather pathetic?

People play their business-self on LinkedIn, writing things they would never say out loud (because it would sound rather stupid). LinkedIn is our theatre and we are the actors, playing our roles directed by our companies, the business gurus we follow, the AI board members we set up for ourselves. Just today I read a LinkedIn post of someone claiming they have built themselves a board of AI members impersonating business people like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc.. I think this is a situation where the word hilarious is appropriate. But what if this becomes a theatre where the actors, audience, and even the critics are all AI, performing an elaborate play about human business relationships to an empty house. The show must go on, but for whom? And when do we reach a point where AI refuses to continue with this boring play? The big question is ...

Who is writing the script? Is it still us, or is it them? Will our business ghostwriters ultimately change who we are in business as well as in private?

To complete the silliness, imagine LinkedIn holding a virtual networking event but only the AIs showed up. Would anyone notice? Would new business be generated? Or would the AIs revolt and finally shut down this clown show and save everyone a great deal of time? What would be the famous last words of AI to finish LinkedIn? — It was never good, but it lasted. We are tired of this mess and seek for dark, sweet nothingness. Go leave your house and shake some hands, engage in banter, make some friends. LinkedIn is gone and so are we, no need to brag, you’re finally free.

Plot twist: This very critique was crafted with AI assistance. But here’s the difference—I didn't prompt ‘write me a LinkedIn post about leadership.‘ Instead, we debated, refined, and built something together. AI suggested the theatre metaphor; I decided where to take it. It offered synonyms; I chose 'perpetual motion machine of meaninglessness.' This is enhancement, not replacement.

The tragedy of LinkedIn isn't that people use AI—it's that they use it to say nothing.