UnlinkedIn

In my continuing effort to live a more intentional life and to avoid the profiting of both my data and attention, I decided to start the new year with one less social media account. LinkedIn now joins my modern social media graveyard which already includes Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.

LinkedIn is a social media website for professionals owned by Microsoft. Even after getting off of the more popular social media sites, I held on to my LinkedIn account as a way to both maintain connections I have made in my career as a software developer, and to share my thoughts with a more professional audience. I came to learn, however, that these two goals contradicted some of my strongest values.

Networking

The economic value of networking is real. I have experienced it myself, leaning on connections I made throughout my career. Climbing the ladder of success truly is easier when you are associated with the right people. This is a serious problem, however. There is nothing egalitarian or meritorious about it. How successful someone becomes should not be determined by the type of people they are born around or later lucked into.

Someone like me who came from poverty with few role models are already at a severe disadvantage. Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, and other self-help programs are great at giving ambitious people the right tools to socially-manipulate others but there's just something innately wrong with the kind of transactional relationships these programs encourage us to create. They are inauthentic and based purely on one thing: money. For anyone familiar with this blog, you'll already know my thoughts on what the for-profit motive is doing to our society.

Despite my own loathing of networking, I do recognize that being able to reject the idea comes from a place of extreme privilege. I am already over a decade into my career in the software industry. I have made connections organically through this time and am fortunate to have these people in my life. Graduates starting at the bottom have no choice but to seek out these connections to get a good start to their career, lest they get passed over by someone who is better at it. These are the people I am speaking for today by taking the stand that I am taking. Their worth should not be based on who they know, and how able or willing they are to create artificial relationships to further their careers.

Sharing

Like Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is also a platform for sharing information with those in your network and the public. While Facebook and Twitter can be full of uneducated ignorance and conspiracy theories, LinkedIn could be contrasted with its privileged and educated naivety. Constant posts of people humblebragging about their careers or sharing of the latest self-help fad, on the backdrop of a global pandemic and growing socioeconomic inequality. I thought it was the perfect target audience to spread my thoughts on socioeconomic justice or the latest political bullshit. I of course was wrong.

A corporatized social media was never meant to be a platform for the constructive sharing of ideas. It is meant to hold your attention and profit from your personal information and activities. That is it. And LinkedIn is no exception. There were times when something I posted was elevated by LinkedIn's algorithm, sometimes being viewed by 10s of thousands of people. But how effective was this really at getting my message out there? As someone who is trying to live with intention, and who would like others to live with intention, was I achieving my goals by counting on a social media algorithm based on maximizing profits to get my message to people? Probably not.

Life without social media

As I continue my journey in life, trying to make history instead of being made by it, I have come to realize that it is better to lead by example. I am not going to preach to anyone and press them to close their social media accounts but I will share my experience and how it affected my own life. Since being off Facebook and Twitter, my mental health indicators are all at a better baseline and I am confident that they will improve even more by being off LinkedIn as well.

So what am I going to do without LinkedIn, knowing that I may be handicapping my career by rejecting conventional wisdom? Well, firstly, I am going to continue to lean on those organic connections I have made so far. Despite my social anxiety and my tendency to be introverted a majority of the time, I also understand humans are social creatures and that we all need social connections to a varying degree. I will continue to be intentional and aware of the types of connections I make, ensuring they are mutually-beneficial, while periodically re-evaluating my existing connections and purging those who no longer provide a positive value to my life (and I don't mean monetary value).

Secondly, instead of seeking arguments online with colleagues and strangers alike, I will instead focus on writing and sharing meaningful content on this blog for those who choose to consume it. I will continue to have direct, positive conversations with friends, family, colleagues, and strangers, focusing on common interests, in order to share and discuss ideas, concerns, and other knowledge. After all, a corporatized social media was never a good replacement for these traditional methods of communication that are needed for a healthy, equalitarian society. My wish is that more people will come to realize this and hopefully earlier in their life than I did!

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