Why LinkedIn Rewards Mediocrity

Summary

I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying. I like the premise of it, don’t get me wrong, a resume you don’t need to update all that often seems cool. Unfortunately though, its turned into the worst possible version of itself. It’s a place where people post half baked nonsense all for the sake of building a personal brand that nobody really cares about.I log in and see constant posting that I can only describe as toxic mediocrity. A seemingly endless stream of posts that are over fluffed, over produced and ultimately say nothing.(I considered posting a screenshot here but will save the folks in my 'network' from potential doxxing. The LinkedIn Lunatics subreddit has no shortage of curated examples.)I like writing on the internet, probably more than most. That doesn’t mean that I think its useful to post vapid nonsense on a regular schedule just for the sake of posting.You’ve probably seen the posts, both the reality and the memes. Generic advice disguised as a story. What my divorce taught me about B2B sales kind of stuff. It seems to be encouraged in much the same way that SEO content is encouraged. Yeah, it probably increases some metric around views or whatever but honestly, what for?The vast majority of it falls into a category I would describe as Toxic Mediocrity. It’s soft, warm and hard to publicly call out but if you’re not deep in the bubble it reads like nonsense. Unlike it’s cousins ‘Toxic Positivity’ and ‘Toxic Masculinity’ it isn’t as immediately obvious. It’s content that spins itself as meaningful and insightful while providing very little of either. Underneath the one hundred and fifty words is, well, nothing. It’s a post that lets you know that sunny days are warm or its better not to be a total psychopath. What is anyone supposed to learn from that.What frustrates me the most about it is that the underlying premise of LinkedIn is still good. There’s some decent stuff on there in amongst all the noise. But, for whatever reason, that go...