How Stupid LinkedIn Failed To Fail Me
It’s nauseatingly unfair I am writing this preposterously stupid post.
I’m going to hashtag#thank hashtag#LinkedIn.
hashtag#Ick.
After months of disemployment, I started to think about my value.
In the cost-benefit analysis of my underwhelming existence, the numbers were clear.
At a purely fiduciary level, I was worth more as a corpse than a still-warm pre-corpse.
Summoning my formidable talent for never paying much attention to the numbers, I felt certain there would be some fiscal redemption that didn't have permanently grimsome consequences.
I found myself in the moist steaming bowels of alarmingly applicable mental health conversations. Suddenly, the importance of allowing my miserable self to be unappealingly vulnerable was entirely too important.
What I needed was a purpose. Like most people in advertising, I thought that meant a gig in advertising, with expensively ineffective health insurance and thoroughly mid dental. And if I couldn’t have that, I needed regular exercise and a hobby.
So I applied for every LinkedIn Glassdoor Indeed Working Not Working hashtag#joblisting. I reached out. I quipped and needled. I supported and snarked. And I took up the ludicrous pastime of writing long-form marketing satire.
I whined about how my elderly urine-smelling body was an awkward fit in the smooth-skinned swagger of a youth-besotted ad world. I grumped about how hashtag#recruiters and hashtag#headhunters I had known for years, now considered me a contagious genital wart, blemishing their pristinely wartless hashtag#resourcing lists.
I wrote about our industry and how most decision-making is driven by gamified hashtag#media spending and not hashtag#consumer impact. I’ve written what our future looks like with hashtag#AI - which as far as I can tell, is filled with maniacally wide smiles and an enthusiastic abundance of redundant body parts - and entirely driven not by hashtag#creative opportunity but by “efficiencies” of time and money.
But what I haven’t written about nearly enough is you. And how you saved me.
Most of you didn't have jobs to offer me. So, you gave me likes and a few hearts. You wrote me, reached out, and reposted. It felt good to feel not entirely useless. A few of you had things I could help with. I was more humbled than being on any award show jury. Thank you for letting me help you. Nothing could have helped me more. I didn’t know most of you before 2022 and those who do know me know I deserved none of your kindness. Already this post is more sickeningly sincere than any LinkedIn post should ever be allowed to be.
It’s the stupidest thing to thank LinkedIn and I guess I am.
But really, I’m thanking the only part of this platform that matters: you.
Thank you.
Francesco Grandi, Leonard Rego, Michael Aimette, Marty Senn, Ross Phernetton, Matt Burgess, Britt Nolan, Pamala Buzick Kim, Greg Hahn, Joyce King Thomas, Danilo Boer, Emma Montgomery, Lyle Shemer, Doug Pedersen, James Coburn, Chris Beresford-Hill, and all of you that I can't say because this post is too long.