Of all the platforms, this has to the be the worst. Where is the line drawn? Is it strictly business? Does any of the personal leech in?
Tonight, I found myself on some generated Linked-In page. I had accepted a request, via email, from a friend’s not-quite-ex. As a not-quite, of course I had to accept. And I agree that he holds these skills and can do thus and such. So my integrity is intact when I recommend. But tonight, I was shunted into a non-stop grid of people whose names were vaguely familiar, or who knew people I knew. The algorithm was working overtime and hitting doubles.
I used Linked-In when I was researching people (i.e., men) from my past while writing my first memoir, Sex & Drugs & Real Estate: Coming of Age in the New Age. I began to refer to Linked-In as “Match DOT com for married people.” I stand by the joke. In my research quest, I supplemented liberally with Facebook, which helped fill in the contours of the rough Linked-In sketches.
I see the same patterns in my own profiles. On Linked-In, I’m terse. On Facebook, I can overshare. Somewhere in between is me.
But is anybody looking? Does anybody care?
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