LinkedIn's role in the iatrogenocide
A billion people engaged in Corporate Pollyannaism lost touch with their own humanity
Editor’s note: One of my goals for this year is to break LinkedIn. Not the platform itself. I want to break the bougie mindset that prevails on that site that has contributed to the destruction of humanity over the last five years. During Covid, LinkedIn censored and banned anyone who spoke the truth. But my understanding is that they have backed off of the censorship somewhat in recent weeks. This is my opening salvo to test what might be possible on that site now. I believe that we should lay siege to the bougiecrats anywhere and everywhere so that eventually our message will break through.
The Insidious Nature of Corporate Pollyannaism
I’m completely fascinated by the unwritten discursive norms on LinkedIn. I call it Corporate Pollyannaism. It’s a language unto itself. Most everyone intuitively knows the rules (they are the rules of bourgeois society after all) but no one ever says them out loud lest they upset the Leviathan. But I shall proceed anyway because I find the social dynamics so interesting and yet under-theorized.
Here’s my first take at the “LinkedIn Rules of Discourse”:
Everyone is always winning. Just so much winning. To the extent that anyone acknowledges anything other than winning, it’s always in service of a larger heroic journey. The artful can sometimes touch upon politics lightly. But capital is never criticized and class struggle is never mentioned. Orange Man Bad and anti-vaxxers can be disparaged, that’s the only “othering” that’s acceptable (all in-groups need an out-group otherwise membership has no value). Beyond that, everyone appears to get along and the “best of all possible worlds” is presented as well within reach. In spite of being one of the world’s largest employment platforms, there is vanishingly little discussion of work per se on the site. No one ‘spills the tea’ on bad bosses or workplaces to avoid. It’s just always go go go from an idealized present into an imagined utopian future.
Look, on some level I get it. LinkedIn is a market — a dating market between employers and employees — so of course everyone wants to present oneself in the best possible light. Microsoft owns the site and so it can do whatever it wants. Indeed as poorly tested biologics were forced on the population over the last four years, developed and promoted in part by Microsoft’s former CEO and Chairman, Microsoft/LinkedIn censored anyone who told the truth.
The discursive norms on LinkedIn are a convention, a social practice, a type of theater for the purposes of financial gain. The dialect is an artifice, a language of introductory commerce but not descriptive of reality (even though it pretends to describe reality). Corporate Pollyannaism is not a method for finding or communicating the truth, indeed it is unconcerned and often contemptuous of the truth. Actual commerce, for example an audited financial statement, involves a completely different dialect (indeed using the peppy, cheery, performative LinkedIn dialect in an SEC statement would get one fired or possibly jailed).
But are the people well-versed in LinkedIn-speak fully aware of its insidious nature? I can picture people new to the site adopting the discourse to try to put their best foot forward. At first they are still bilingual — they present one way on LinkedIn even though they speak a different vernacular in their day-to-day life. They remain cognizant of the fact that most workplaces are authoritarian, abusive, filled with petty infighting, and damaging to the soul even if they are not allowed to speak about that on LinkedIn. But maybe they get a promotion and are now seeking job candidates — they are on the management side of the transactional relationship representing the interests of capital or the state. I wonder if over time they come to permanently see the world through the lens of this bougie discourse? Is LinkedIn a slippery slope that trains people into a mindset they probably would not have willingly chosen on their own? If so, is LinkedIn a machine that gradually strips us of our humanity?
My profound worry is two-fold (and I guess it’s why I felt compelled to write this):
1.) Repeating something over and over, as part of the LinkedIn discursive system, really does change one’s thoughts over time. So it’s not entirely innocent. AND
2.) What happens if corporations and the state merge (what we’ve historically called fascism but the faint of heart call corporatism) and put their profit interests ahead of the well-being of individuals, families, and society? At that point, we are participating in our own demise if we play by the rules (unwritten or otherwise) of the system.
Indeed that’s what happened over the last five years. Corporations and the state merged. They ran a sophisticated global operation to increase their power, wealth, and control. And the vast majority of the over one billion Bougie Winners on LinkedIn didn’t say a word because they were so thoroughly indoctrinated into a system of Corporate Pollyannaism that, to this day, they don’t even realize what happened or acknowledge how they may have participated in the assault on humanity by the fascist Pharma state.
Blessings to the warriors. 🙌
Prayers for everyone fighting to stop the iatrogenocide. 🙏
Huzzah for everyone building the parallel society our hearts know is possible. ✊
Thank you for your patience as I dealt with health issues over the last several months.
In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.
As always, I welcome any corrections.
I guess this is my critique of so many bourgeois institutions — prep schools, liberal arts colleges and universities, many internships, management consulting practices, investment banking — they train young people through a set of norms and lots of repetition to become an agent of the corporate state which is something that they might not have freely chosen for themselves if presented with a clear map of where things were heading. And once immersed in these institutions it's really hard to NOT fall prey to their wiles. It's sort of a social variation on informed consent. Young people need to know that 'if you keep participating in certain practices including LinkedIn it may rewire your brain to support fascism.'
I realized today that the task for my Substack is to take a feeling, thought, or pattern that I have not seen described elsewhere and see if I can put it into words. It's akin to songwriting in that way. I just want to capture a moment that I imagine lots of us are experiencing and see if my brain can stretch enough to put it into words. It's really my favorite thing.