LinkedIn: From Professional Network to Corporate Performance Theater

LinkedIn started as a brilliant concept: a digital space for actual networking, job hunting, and sharing genuinely useful industry insights. Fast-forward to today, and it’s become a dystopian hellscape where everyone is a “thought leader” who “thrives in fast-paced environments” and has apparently never made a mistake in their entire career. The platform is now drowning in corporate speak so thick you need subtitles. We’ve created a business language that’s basically English wearing a suit and pretending to be important. Why say “we fired people” when you can say we’re “rightsizing through workforce optimization to align with market dynamics”? It’s like watching someone use a thesaurus to order coffee.

The Corporate Speak Hall of Fame:

• “Let’s circle back” = “I’m ignoring this until you forget about it”
• “Leverage our core competencies” = “do the thing we’re supposedly good at”
• “Ideate around this” = “someone please have an idea because I don’t”
• “Boil the ocean” = “attempt the impossible while pretending it’s strategic”
• “Drink from the fire hose” = “we’re disorganized and calling it ‘dynamic’”

My boss has achieved black belt status in corp speak. His wife is also a corporate executive. I’m genuinely fascinated by their dinner conversations: “Honey, how was your day?” “Well, I leveraged some synergies to optimize our value proposition, but we need to circle back on rightsizing our household operational framework.” “Should we ideate around takeout?” “Let’s socialize that with the kids and see if we can move the needle on family engagement metrics.”

Meanwhile, in Job Search Hell…

The job board situation is peak absurdity. We’re all using AI to write resumes and cover letters, blasting them into the void, only to have other AI systems immediately reject them without a human ever seeing them. It’s robots talking to robots about humans they’ll never meet. We’ve automated rejection so efficiently that applying for jobs has become like shouting into a very polite, very digital black hole.

Whatever happened to actual human connection? You know, that thing LinkedIn was supposedly built for? Now it’s just a theater where everyone performs their “authentic professional self” while speaking in a language that would make George Orwell weep.

At least the cringe content is entertaining.