LinkedIn almost feels like Microsoft Forums. Have you ever tried wandering through the rooms of Microsoft, looking for an answer to your question? Well they are eerily empty. No signs of human habitation or plant life there.
You are alone in the universe.
But LinkedIn is even scarier, because you see faces and activity taking place, but never do you feel connected there – at least I don’t. People may be looking at you there, but you’d never know it. They may be listening to your thoughts, but never show their own. The seriousness of the site is oppressive. I have no doubt that I am far from my element there.
It’s all about Business.
And I am not.
Furthermore, the thing that scares me about that place is the total absence of humor. And humor is what makes me tick. The darker, the better.
But I suspect humor does creep through its doors. Subtle and unrecognizable. And when it does – that’s when you perceive the sober devotion to Business there. That’s their world. Connections. Practical people. Materialism – not that that’s not important. But not for an artist. Though survival is a matter many artists struggle with daily.
But in that way, LinkedIn is the opposite of Facebook, the domain of frivolity and superficiality and a great disregard for reality. I have often felt NASA could post the approach of a comet toward earth, and it’ll be glossed over – a video of cute cats playing is much less demanding than the impending doom of the planet, less taxing on the Brain. As such, I designated Facebook with the profound thought by Andy Warhol and made it my Facebook mantra …
“I am a deeply superficial person.”
I posted this regularly, to no avail, and not surprisingly. And then I deactivated my account. Bliss followed.
But back to LinkedIn …
Know how they have suggested contacts? Lists and lists of people. Well, this one kept cropping up – a lot like that DUI sign on the Beltway – and I was thinking, once again, What the fuck!
Now either someone outside of LinkedIn has a wicked sense of humor, or, I’m not sure what else … I didn’t bother to check the profile, but simply reacted to its presence there.
And once again, I saw the total absence of humor on LinkedIn.
And I thought …
What a pity.
