Clown Town, But in Suits

LinkedIn used to be boring in a useful way. You’d park your résumé there, maybe announce a promotion, and then leave it alone until you needed a job. It wasn’t fun, but it was professional. Now it’s something else entirely. Today, LinkedIn feels like a circus—scams, posturing, incoherent rants dressed up as leadership lessons. The noise has swallowed the signal.

The scam problem alone is staggering. Millions of fake accounts. Recruiters that don’t exist. Job offers that are really phishing traps. Some go as far as staging fake interviews just to install malware on your machine. The con works because LinkedIn still carries that aura of trust. If someone in a suit tells you about an opportunity, you’re more likely to believe them. That trust is the weakness being exploited.

But even when it’s not scams, what’s left isn’t much better. The feed is stuffed with humblebrags, AI vaporware, and founder confessions written like bad self-help books. People parade half-baked side projects as revolutionary breakthroughs. They craft melodramatic stories about failure and resilience, all designed to rack up likes. It’s Instagram logic—look at me, admire me—just in corporate drag.

The culture this creates is poisonous. Job postings openly demand twelve-hour days and six-day weeks. Stories of burnout and breakdowns get spun into inspirational fodder. Companies fire staff and cut perks, then post about “building for the future.” The disconnect between the public performance and the private reality is absurd, and yet the applause keeps rolling in. LinkedIn rewards appearances, not substance.

I’ll admit it: I’m still there. Every quarter or so, I log in, check messages, and move on. If you run a business, you can’t avoid it completely. Not everyone on LinkedIn is a scammer or a performer. There are still good people, real opportunities, and legitimate uses. But being there doesn’t mean you have to play along.

Here’s the only sane way to use LinkedIn: stop connecting with everyone. Don’t treat it like a numbers game. Only connect with people you’d actually want to work with or learn from. The more random connections you add, the more noise floods in. The smaller and sharper your network, the more tolerable the platform becomes.

LinkedIn isn’t going back to what it was. The flood of scams, AI posturing, and founder theatrics is permanent. You can’t change that. What you can do is limit your exposure. Treat it like an errand: check in, do what you must, connect with someone worthwhile, then log out.

LinkedIn loves to call itself the “world’s professional network”. Maybe that was true once. Now it’s just another circus. And if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself in costume too.