The era of authenticity has come late to LinkedIn

Anthropologists specializing in the study of assholes should hang around bars late at night, stand next to Chicago bike lanes, camp out in little league baseball bleachers—and scroll down LinkedIn, where pretty much everyone is engaging in one of these activities:

1. Logrolling. I'll endorse your core competencies if you'll endorse mine.
2. Congratulating one another disingenuously. "Congrats on 22 years at the Department of Streets & Sanitation!"
3. Sharing "exciting news," like your organization has been around for 15 years.
4. Being delighted to be invited.
5. Sharing business advice of such dubious quality, the headlines must emphasize their quantity: 5 crucial communication skills, 8 social media hacks, 6 common SEO mistakes, 9 essential media relations tips, 50 ways to leave your lover.
6. Uttering claptrap: "Great leaders don't set out to be a leader … they set out to make a difference. It's never about the role and always about the goal."
7. Praising claptrap shared by self-appointed gurus who have written more books than they've read. The above claptrap received 4,579 likes and 109 comments. Median comment: "So true!!!!!!"
8. Standing flatfooted in favor of lifelong learning, leadership, excellence and work-life balance.
9. Apropos of nothing, regurgitating insipid quotes on management from notoriously terrible manager Steve Jobs. "It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do." (40,866 likes and 2,259 comments.) [Also, did Jobs actually pronounce that semi-colon?] {Also, did you ever hear of someone telling Steve Jobs what to do?}
10. Demonstrating a magnificent grasp of the obvious. Like the copywriter who thought to tell us: "Copywriting is about organizing ideas into a strategic framework so people can understand—and act—on your offerings. In other words, if someone can’t understand your message, how can they take the next step?" With punchy copy like that, we don't need instruction manuals.
11. Gaping at this endless flowing stream and calling it work, because at least it's not Facebook.

But never—ever!—actually using LinkedIn to directly sell your services, because that would be untoward.

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