As we know, each social network has its own use: we share our holiday photos on Instagram, our political opinions on Twitter, our best dance steps on Tik Tok… But for the professional sphere, the reference network remains LinkedIn, its reassuring blue interface and its posts reminiscent of the golden age of Facebook. The professional social network, initially intended to find work and create connections between employees, quickly turned into a caricature of all that is reproached to the start-up nation and to capitalism. If we take a walk on Facebook or Twitter, many groups and pages of memes, these offbeat humorous images, are centered on LinkedIn: the group Neurchi from LinkedIn has 77,000 members on Facebook, while Neurchi of start-up nation, positive thinking and dynamic young executives has nearly 19,000 members. In these groups, screenshots from LinkedIn have a great place.
On Twitter, the account Disruptive Humans of Linkedin browses the social network to extract embarrassing or funny publications. “This is an account that has existed since 2017, but which we recovered with some of the team of TechTrash (a newsletter on the absurdities of the tech world, editor’s note) in 2020. We are a bit of an observatory of bullshit ”laughs Bruno, one of the admins of the account. “What amuses us is to see the reactions and the discussions that these posts generate: there is a lot of self-mockery, we are going to dissect the remarks” he adds. Like on this inspiring post, where the author explains that he found the meaning of life… by pooping in the forest.
Newspeak pros
On LinkedIn, the publications follow each other and look alike: sentences well separated by a line break, dozens of emojis (sometimes several times per sentence) and a story structure that ends with a moral, like a ‘A fable. Added to these characteristics is Newspeak, that is to say a way of speaking close to the language of wood and/or political correctness: this can go through words in English, incomprehensible concepts outside the sphere of marketing or obscure acronyms. “It’s a marketing language that is unbearable, quite formatted. Because beyond newspeak, there is a work of rhythm and form with lots of emojis and smileys. It’s almost artistic,” laughs Bruno.
What amazes one of the administrators of Disruptive humans of LinkedIn the most is the popularity of these posts, some of which rack up hundreds or even thousands of likes. “When you analyze the semantics of a post, it’s often rubbish. We have the impression that people become experts on a subject overnight,” explains Bruno, who confides: “we think we’ve seen everything, and we manage to see even worse”. Storytelling based on the death of a loved one, on current events, on one’s own children, on certain contrary (even illegal) methods in terms of human resources… Everything is good for the like, in the start-up nation .
The start-up is dead, long live the agile method (no)
But how is it that LinkedIn has become a paradise for start-ups and cryptic messages? “I assume that it’s LinkedIn’s algorithm that pushes these kinds of posts, so that people stay longer and comment,” analyzes Bruno. As usual, the strength of the algorithms dictates the content: which explains why LinkedIn has transformed itself into a sort of Facebook (for its boomer side) of CSP+.
Recently, a small artificial intelligence called Viral Post Generator made the rounds on Twitter: this LinkedIn post generator suggests inserting an inspiring piece of advice and adjusting your level of cringe, that is to say of embarrassment. “What these generators show is that it’s easy to replace these speeches with an artificial intelligence and to do them on the chain” notes Bruno. For example, at the editorial office, we created this LinkedIn post, which tells the story of an Uber driver who eats a sandwich. And who’s what he wanna be, with a mind set positive. Inspirational, right?
“On quite strategic posts, written by people who have power, we sometimes have the impression of dealing with empty shells, who do nothing except write LinkedIn posts” Bruno points out to me. What if this was the ultimate bullshit job?