The Age of the LinkedIn Idiot

When visibility trumps all.

A strange piece of advice it was. “Build a brand”.

What does it really mean? McDonald’s does it well. So does Apple. Coca Cola is known around the world. Do people have brands? Probably. Politicians develop a certain personal brand. Elon Musk certainly has his own.

What is a brand?

Perhaps it will help to define what a brand is. It is an intangible property. The evocation of a variety of feelings, presumptions and expectations. You expect McDonald’s to be a certain way. Coca Cola must live up to certain standards. Elon Musk will do….what he does. Brands can evoke familiarity and a sense of comfort. Brand loyalty is considered a prized asset. Clearly, brands are positive, unique identifiers.

Personal Brands

Personal brands are cultivated by generally well known people who need instant recognition with people. Politicians, entrepreneurs, public figures. But does everyone need a personal brand? It may be mundane today but could very well become an existential question tomorrow. Should technocrats and neo-classical economists have their way, automated tools, AI and algorithms will eventually replace the vast majority of humans in their jobs. I lack the experience and intellectual capabilities to understand the full implications of this on humanity as a whole. But will it become imperative for humans to be unique in order to avoid being seen as a cog in the machine? Will personal brands become the differentiator? Not as they are now.

The age of the “expert”

LinkedIn was already a cesspit of politicking, useless ads and worthless stories of failure and achievement. Recently, it has taken a more subtly wasteful form. So-called “experts” have flooded LinkedIn, desperate to develop a “brand”.

It hardly matters if you’re actually an expert in the area. Shallow knowledge suffices as long as you can add some form of mythical “value” to people’s lives. How do you measure the value you add? In likes and impressions, of course.

This isn’t new of course, the infamous Dunning-Kruger effect was published 1999 and details this very phenomenon. Put simply, ignorance leads to high self-confidence. Think, the opposite of the Imposter effect.

See for example the hundreds, nay, thousands of business experts who claim to be able to set up “value” creating businesses in a jiffy. Or those grads who leveraged their privilege and thousands of dollars to join the “best” universities and default their way into networks that got them their jobs who now peddle advice on ways to “crack” these interviews. While these are the more benign kinds, the financial influencers are the ones to watch out for. With little but a few years of experience and an MBA or equivalent, these “gurus” advise millions on investing decisions, spinning (often untrue) rags-to-riches stories. Many of these so-called investors likely lack the knowledge of the intricacies of finance and investing. Yet their experience with one thing or the other somehow leads them to believe in their own prowess.

These experts are unlikely to be anything close to the definition of that and are even more unlikely to follow any rigour in their study or mastery of the subject. My conversations and engagements with such authors have revealed a singular desire on their part to “build a brand” with no regard whatsoever to the accuracy of the content they post. What is this really worth?

Name and Shame

These luminaries are ones I would dearly like to label. The LinkedIn Idiot. The ones who hammer away at their keyboards, “generating content” about nothing useful in particular and stoking conversation with statements that are downright wrong or controversial to build their brand.

Does this lead to anything? Is it now a necessity to have a personal brand to perform repetitive jobs? Unfortunately, I found little research on what actually constitutes a brand and where exactly it helps a person. Do they get better jobs? Are they hired faster or at better companies? Do they leverage their networks into more money? It isn’t entirely clear. Nor is it obvious that the effort leads to anything more than impressions and likes. But in an increasingly social world will this become a crucial aspect to securing jobs?

And what does this imply for recruiters? Do LinkedIn “brands” with arguably little relation to what the job might entail actually help or hide what recruiters actually look for?

Finally what does this mean for those like myself who prefer not to “leverage” LinkedIn? Is this really a skillset that adds value? That makes sense to have?

It would be blaisè of me to answer that question and profess myself an expert on this matter in an article bashing so-called “experts”. So I leave this to the real experts. Perhaps one day our social media profiles will be all we need to “show the world who we really are”.

I hope I’m long gone when that day comes.