FUCK LinkedIn

(UPDATE: I caught some static over this post from friends. Friends who had traditional educations and who LinkedIn was built for. I even had some anxiety over further backlash, but I am not changing a thing about the post. I realized that the reason LinkedIn doesn’t serve me is because there is no sense of community or humanity and I like both of those things, so I am going to leave my bitchy rant about LinkedIn intact. If there is one legacy that I would like to pass onto my kids, it is one of shameless truth.)

What ever happened to thinking out of the box?* Where do self-employed creative folks go to connect with non-corporate creative folks? And if your career has not been conventional, but all of a sudden you decide to, or are forced to, enter the world of muggles, what then? The first thing people do when you network is look up your LinkedIn profile. Should they also look up your Tinder profile? I got snatched up pre-Tinder so don’t bother. 

My name is Claudia. I ran my own small ad and design biz for over 20 years and pruned and watered many beautiful clients, some for 10 years, with sprinkles of hustling in a “grab bag” of trades when I was in between clients or when my client money didn’t support my Trader Joe’s habit. 

Hustler. I think that should be my title on LinkedIn.

I took about 6 years off from “hoin’ out” my marketing acumen to become an indentured servant to my kids.

Have you ever heard of creating yer own path? Not everyone takes SATs, goes to their parents’ alma mater, gets roofied at a frat party, graduates, lands a job at E&Y because the guy who roofied them is now CFO, and they have proof. Not everyone is blessed like that.

Some people’s dads were Colombian drug lords in Los Angeles* who died at 38 leaving their wife and daughters with nothing and nothing. Then one daughter grows up hating drugs (until she moves to San Francisco in her late 30s) and also hating rich people who didn’t have a dead drug dealer for a father but gets revenge by becoming an art director in her 20s at a big fancy ad agency on a big fat car account to prove that getting roofied at a frat party isn’t the only way to the top. (The other sister got revenge by becoming a successful school teacher and marrying a wonderful man, but “she” is not on LinkedIn so I guess she doesn’t exist.)

So if I hate LinkedIn so much, why don’t I delete my account and why did it say that I work at Interpol? (I removed Interpol because I don’t want my house to be bugged.) My kids brought home lice two weeks ago. No more bugs. I don’t delete my LinkedIn account because when LinkedIn first happened, it was a good way to learn about who you were fixing to copulate with. So deleting LinkedIn is kinda like deleting my old little black book. And would ya figure that I married someone who doesn’t really know how to use LinkedIn? I think that may have been my first question for him, NOT “Do you have HPV?”, but “Are you on LinkedIn?”, and when he answered, “I don’t really use LinkedIn.” I would have taken a knee right there.

So for all of the misfits out there who contribute to society in so many ways and are still able to pay their bills but don’t want to be pigeonholed into one category or dissected like a frog… where the fuck do WE go to connect? The park? And what ever happened to a good old resume? I’ll tell you what happened to the resume. The resume doesn’t tell the person who is lurking at you, how much they can use you to exit their miserable job using YOUR connections.

*thinking out of the box: insanely overused *I really like to mention my deceased Colombian drug lord dad. Don’t believe me? read Micro-dosing Mommy During Covid-19.

Written by Claudia Ossa

Acclaimed Acclimator

Mother of Two People and Two Fish

Former Branding Brander

YouTube Creator

Facebook Group Dictator

By |2020-05-18T14:06:29-04:00May 13th, 2020|

One Comment

  1. jake November 21, 2021 at 6:57 PM

    OH MY GOD I LOVED THIS!!!

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