In yesterday’s post I referred to a Sunday New York Times article about “Black LinkedIn.” There, as on Black Twitter, Black Americans are using a public platform to express once-whispered ideas much more loudly.
The difference being that Twitter has always been a place to air provocative views, and LinkedIn has always been a place where nobody farted. And if somebody did, nobody smelled it. And if somebody smelled it, nobody laughed.
Now, people like diversity consultant Aaisha Joseph, a diversity consultant with almost 16,000 followers on LinkedIn, say things like, “Ima need #companies to stop sending their dedicated House Negros to ‘deal with the Blacks’ they deem out of control. It’s really not a good look—it’s actually a very #whitesupremecist and #racist one.”
Ever since LinkedIn introduced its news feed, I’ve long wished for provocative conversation there. And I’ve been confounded by the uniformly milquetoast posts. A couple years ago here, I wrote that “The Era of Authenticity Has Come Late to LinkedIn.”
All anyone ever does on LinkedIn, I wrote, was:
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.
12. Gaping at this endless flowing stream and calling it work, because at least it’s not Facebook.
So yeah, I’m all for Black LinkedIn. I’m also for a more candid and courageous LinkedIn in general—people caring enough about their work and trusting enough in the rightness of their own ideas to occasionally say what they think in front of Future Employers and everybody.
Obviously, you don’t want to shit where you eat. Obviously most people won’t say on LinkedIn what they would say on Twitter (though of course prudent people don’t say on Twitter what they wouldn’t say on LinkedIn).
But a robust debate on LinkedIn contains two elements of good conversation that don’t exist elsewhere on social media: 1. Social accountability, as LinkedIn profiles can’t be anonymous, and the people you’re debating with are the people whose respect you probably need to maintain if you’re going to have a good career. 2. The debaters are talking about something they actually know something about—their business, their professional specialty, the work they do all day—rather than the many subjects they gas on about on Facebook, on which their expert status is dubious.
Imagine a place where people actually knew what they were talking about most of the time, and did not want to piss one another off unnecessarily.
That’s LinkedIn. And now that Black people have started to be real out there, maybe the rest of us can, too.
Leave a Reply