Category: Social Media

Thoughts on socia media, which has addicted many and alienated others.

The Demise of Authenticity

Is authenticity no longer a “thing?”

I encountered a conversation on LinkedIn yesterday where the original post was clearly written in ChatGPTese or a dialect thereof, and every single comment was responded to in the same ChatGPTese. 

When I questioned whether the original post and the responses to numerous apparently human-created comments were being written by a carbon-based entity or something else, I received a quick response, also in ChatGPTese. It didn’t at all read like there was a human behind it.

Authenticity is becoming rare, both on LinkedIn and on other social media platforms. The only input needed from a carbon-based participant is a prompt to a silicon-based assistant, then you just post the result.

Who could tell the difference? Well, just about anyone more intelligent than a starfish and who has not been blinded by the AI hype.

And now, a moment of silence in memory of our dear departed friend, Authenticity.

Carcinogen Ads Promoted by Microsoft’s LinkedIn

[This was posted originally on LinkedIn on March 21, 2025, but I have since decided to stop uploading significant posts to a platform controlled by Microsoft, preferring rather to place them here, on a venue that I control.]

Microsoft’s LinkedIn sends me ads for Japan Tobacco. I am attempting to stop them, but don’t know if it will work. Japan Tobacco sells carcinogens.

While Meta is totally criminal and partners with criminals on its several platforms, I never got a Japan Tobacco ad on Facebook when I was a user of that criminal platform.

Partnering with JT is simply sleazy and doesn’t reflect well on Microsoft.

JT cannot advertise on broadcast media, and I suppose it is using what it can get, which is a complicit company like Microsoft.

Seeing this kind of literally toxic garbage thrown at me gives me new encouragement to post just anything I want to LinkedIn. Screw Microsoft’s cover story of LinkedIn being a business networking platform. It’s nothing of the sort.

I’ll need to see if telling Microsoft that the JT ads are “annoying or not interesting” works. If not, something else might be in the works from here in Curmudgeonville.

受注してなんぼ

I am excited and thrilled to announce that I’m neither excited nor thrilled to see Microsoft go the way of all social media cesspools, every day approaching closer and closer to Zuckerberg’s platforms.

TikTok-like videos, plantation investment scams, and more.

And, of course, there are the LinkedIn coaches who will teach you how to achieve “success on LinkedIn”. WTF does that mean? Nothing, actually, but the engagement-harvesting addicted LinkedIn believers who try to game the algorithm to get more impressions, followers, and connections apparently haven’t figured that out.

It’s meaningless, folks. In fact, never was more than an illusion of relevance.

As someone in Osaka might put it, 受注してなんぼ.

Sluggish Microsoft AI?

It took Microsoft almost 30 minutes recently to start shadow-banning a post I made on its LinkedIn platform, reporting what is happening in the war in Europe, coupled with a common-sense suggestion of what needs to be done (essential, to achieve a solution to the Russian problem, in form of a decisive defeat of Russia and removal of their ability to continue their aggression).

I suppose the shadow-banning is understandable, since Microsoft continues to promote the fantasy that its LinkedIn platform is a useful business platform, rather than what it actually is, just another social media platform, created and operated for the same purpose as other social media platforms.

A company of the stature of Microsoft, however, should speed up its AI-driven shadow-banning so as to more effectively prevent this kind of unpleasant content about the real world from reaching its founder and creator users, who might not be excited, thrilled, or honored to see such stuff.

They might be more interested in turning the page to embark on a new chapter, continuing to elevate their journey and, on the way, opening doors that lead to exciting places in the LinkedIn Phony Kingdom.

I wonder if Microsoft’s AI would have been able to figure out the sarcasm in the above paragraph. Perhaps, but it is irrelevant; Microsoft is basically the same as operators of other social media platforms.

What LinkedIn Has Become: Taking silly and vapid to a new level.

Years ago I was under the impression that LinkedIn was a platform where people searching for employment could interact with potential employers. Silly me to believe that the platform would not evolve into what it is today.

Today, the platform is awash with self-congratulatory posts from people who are likely desperate to find their next “role.” This makes me wonder just it was when a job became a role. I guess the term position needed to be “elevated,” and I think it was some time after problems became issues and considerably after the personnel department was rebirthed to HR. But I digress.

Another annoyance that LinkedIn provides is the countless self-styled coaches, many selling advice on how to “succeed on LinkedIn.” My guess is that many are themselves desperate to succeed and are working the aisles of other desperate LinkedIn users.

Then there are the AI evangelicals, promoting collections of computer code running in silicon-based entities as the answer to all the problems…uh, issues…faced by carbon-based entities.

Quite central to most of these vapid posts is the use of a blinding variety of buzzwords and buzzphrases, devoid of any identifiable substance, but trendy nonetheless.

It appears that substance takes a backseat to fluff on LinkedIn, which is rapidly coming to rival all other social media platforms, although perhaps without the same level of criminal activity (yet, anyway), and no single identifiable Trumpic sycophant at the helm.