A friend and I have a mini-hobby of sharing these with each other under the title of “Today in Thanking Myself”. The highest level are the ones where people pimp out their own families for LinkedIn karma

This Twitter account does a great job curating these:

https://twitter.com/BestofLinkedin

Thanks. I liked this one.

https://twitter.com/BestofLinkedin/status/139178233788132966...

And this:

https://twitter.com/BestofLinkedin/status/138491328852230963...

Thank you! I was actually considering starting a blog to collect them, glad to see that someone has stepped up and done it already.

This is so nauseatingly entertaining, and a distillation of similar bullshit I've encountered freelancing for various agencies and startups.

It feels like this field is ripe for trolling - people making fake accounts and making similar inspirational posts that are a bit too outlandish but could almost be real.

Or maybe these troll accounts exist, but the posts are indistinguishable from the real thing...

That’s by far the worst. Something bad happens to their family and they make a post about it! I have seen examples too terrible to post as a comment (assume something very bad happened and the next day theres a post on jt)

Like the VCs Congratulating Themselves account

> it's not polite to call out BS

But it's perfectly fine to spew BS if you do it politely. The "politeness" weapon has been used on me many times

You can use the same sort of polite etiquette in well crafted form to undermine these polite attacks. It takes quick thinking and usually works best in the form of an open ended question that sets the BS in its place. No one says anything explicitly but everyone internally acknowledges it. It may be a bit passive aggressive but such is most modern business culture and meetings.

The problem with this is well-stated in Brandolini's Law [0]: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."

So, effectively, this means that given equivalent amounts of effort, you've got 10 people producing bullshit for every 1 refuting it effectively. Thus the bullshit continues to spread.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

The trick to that problem is to pass the burden of proof on the one producing the BS (as it should be), which is similar to what Bertrand Russell does in Russell's Teapot:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

From why I’ve seen on LinkedIn, subtly doesn’t work. Folks that pick up on it probably spotted the BS already. You really have to hit them over the head with a hammer to drive the point in.

Can you elaborate a bit on what this would look like?

Someone passive aggressively gives you with a backhanded compliment to set you up for failure. They stroke your ego, build you up in front if people, then offer a trove of BS that needs to be accomplished that only you are capable of accomplishing and makes it difficult for you to refute.

Instead of being pressured into saying yes, you quickly think about the information and ask a general question like, "well that might be possible, I'm personally not sure how, perhaps you had some ideas on how we can accomplish that in the proposed timeline?" and so forth.

If someone is marketing you a BS solution, you can usually dip down to a kernel of truth and quickly form a well crafted open ended question to ask how they address some problem their solution clearly couldn't. "With our application, you can easily interface with any platform" -- "that's awesome, how much effort is typically required to do that? Do you have example cases?" And so on.

You could also use an even more general/vague question similar to the one you just posed: asking someone to elaborate on something that's clearly BS usually catches them off guard if they were just making up nonsense and had no thought behind their statement. If they had some thought, it's going to be pretty clear. All that's needed is to pepper on some politeness to make it: "that sounds intriguing and thought provoking, could you elaborate on that idea more?"

These are benign on the surface but can be used offensively and without any clarity of the genuine intent to pass the BS baton around.

A polite question asking the person to go into further detail, for instance.

Perfectly fine is understating it. You get paid more if you do it.

If I call out BS there’s a risk of the influencer incensing their followers enough for them to go after my employer and colleagues and tell them that I’m bully.

Best not to poke the bear.

Assuming* that scenario were to play out, it would be such a painful irony for an influencer to encourage their followers to harass an ordinary stranger under the accusation of the stranger being a "bully", of all things.

* "Assuming" because you won't risk it, not because it couldn't happen

It happens all the time and takes that exact form every time. Pretty much every internet dispute involves the drama triangle[0]. This rule gets more and more true as more people are involved in the dispute. (The viewer is invited to fill the third role)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle

Yes, and I assume my reply will also be broadcast to my network. Even folks that agree are likely to see this sort of calling out as petty.

LinkedIn is now just Facebook which opens at Work and China.

It's sad because I did find some quality talent from LinkedIn during my recruitment drives for previous startup couple of years back, Also since someone looking for a job is de-facto expected to have a LinkedIn profile helped that.

But now when I recently logged in, I saw something akin to sharing video status like in other social-media chat apps and my profile page is asking me to upload a '30 second video intro'; I feel this is going increase inequality as someone who was able to project their qualifications and experience first without distractions is now made to compete with someone who's good with TikToking.

Microsoft has suspended new Chinese accounts on LinkedIn. I expect that they'll eventually be forced to completely separate the Chinese LinkedIn from the rest of the world. Can't have anyone mentioning Tiananmen Square on June 4.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/11/tech/linkedin-china-microsoft...

I have solved this problem by unfollowing people who post or like low quality content. My LinkedIn feed is now mostly filled with useful corporate news.

You should a LinkedIn post about that (but seriously great advice)

Could not resist the temptation:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ohtis_is-your-linkedin-feed-f...

I shed a tear of pride... haha

“faux-thentic” is truly a masterful word, my lord. Now I have learnt it I immediately see examples of it everywhere

LinkedIn = Instagram for business people.

The awkward thing is that these people are projecting their insecurities.

When they say "I really care about all the employees, here I am giving the janitor a $500 giftcard" I hear " I feel bad about letting several employees think they were getting big bonuses, so here I am looking for feedback on how great of a person I am"

You forgot the nauseatingly formulaic "I wouldn't be where I am today without the :insert unsung low status figure here:" posts from high status people who you know couldn't give two s** about said low status people.

It's a social ponzi scheme...

OOM = ?

Probably 'order of magnitude' but I was amused by the initial reading of 'out of memory'.

Order of magnitude, based on the context.

Not like Out of Memory, like in a Linux process.