I have a LinkedIn profile the way some people have a storage unit: I pay nothing, I never visit, and I am a little afraid of what is in there. Every time I do log in, a man I met once in 2014 is announcing that a barista taught him about resilience. The worst linkedin photos and posts come from that same place, where no lunch is just a lunch and every delayed flight is a lesson in servant leadership. I read all of them, and I am thrilled to share my learnings below.
Bold rebrand of unemployment.
The wings. It goes in the wings.
The robots are smiling. The dad is not relaxing.
References available upon rush B.
Agree?
Step four is doing a lot of the lifting.
The software got 30 percent. He got a calendar invite.
Busy week for that one candidate.
The kid still said fine.
He wants 200 percent and a heads up.
What's in it? Grenadine and confidence.
The free holiday is nine hours in an airport.
Mark was just doing his job.
Great mentorship. Really warm.
The comment is longer than the party was.
Graduated top of a class of one.
The stranger in the middle deserves hazard pay.
Bad news for anyone carrying coffee.
Lost the earbuds, found a personal brand.
The rest of us struggled to find a quiet room.
Congratulations. Also, this is LinkedIn.
The robot got a decal before the grandparents did.
Worst linkedin photos
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I love a story that definitely happened. Linkedin cringe runs on the tiny parable, a tale where a stranger says one perfect sentence and then presumably ascends. I know these are invented because I have tried to have a meaningful exchange with a bartender, and he asked if I was going to order. When three different people post the same heartwarming interview word for word, that is not a coincidence. That is a franchise.
The hiring advice scares me more. Somewhere, a person with real power over salaries has decided that a slow walker cannot be trusted, and I walk like I am carrying soup. This is hustle culture at its purest, the belief that everything about you is secretly a job interview. I once got turned down for a role and was told I seemed too relaxed. I was not relaxed, I was dissociating.
And now the robots have arrived, which has given linkedin influencers a brand new way to be strange in public. Children are drawing workflows, and strangers are offering equity to software. I do not understand most of it. I still print my boarding pass, and last week I thanked an automatic door, so I may not be the future of work.
What I notice, under all the announcing, is how badly everybody wants to be told they are doing a good job. That is the entire website. It is a billion adults holding up a drawing and asking if you like it, except the drawing is a quarterly result and they have added a lesson. Nobody is allowed to simply have a Tuesday. The Tuesday has to mean something, and then it needs a photo of you on a plane.
I get it, though. I have rewritten a two line work update eleven times so it would sound confident and also like I did not care, which is not a real tone. We are all a little embarrassing when we want to be picked. The people in these posts just do it at full volume, with a headshot, and frankly that takes a kind of courage I do not have. I would endorse them for it, if I could remember my password.
The lesson is fake. The lanyard is real. Agree?
If this left you feeling professionally unwell, please keep networking with us. The worst LinkedIn posts are archived for your continued growth, the LinkedIn memes say what you cannot say in the comments, and the corporate memes are best read during a meeting that should have been an email. There is also a whole shelf of worst job interviews, in case you want to feel better about your own. Thoughts? Do not actually leave thoughts.
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Jake Parker, known around the web as "Jay," is a digital writer with over 10 years of experience covering internet humor, meme trends, and viral content. Before joining Thunder Dungeon, Jay was the lead editor at MemeWire, where he helped curate memes that broke the internet, including coverage on trends like Distracted Boyfriend, Kombucha Girl, and Bernie Sanders’ Mittens. A self-proclaimed "professional procrastinator," Jay spends his downtime scrolling Reddit and Twitter to stay ahead of what's about to break the internet next.
