Look, I’m nursing my third bourbon of the morning, watching my screen through bleary eyes, and I just read something that makes too much damn sense: over half of LinkedIn’s longer posts are written by AI. You know what? I’m not even shocked. I’m just disappointed it took this long for someone to prove what we’ve all suspected - that the platform of professional circle-jerking has gone full robot.
Let that sink in for a moment. 54% of those inspirational stories about failing upward, those humble brags about “taking on new challenges,” and those congratulatory reach-arounds are being churned out by machines. The same machines that are supposedly going to take all our jobs are now writing about how excited they are to announce their new positions.
The beautiful irony here is that most of us couldn’t tell the difference anyway. Corporate speak was already so devoid of humanity that teaching AI to replicate it was probably easier than teaching it to write a grocery list. “I’m humbled and excited to announce…” might as well be a macro on your keyboard at this point.
Remember when we used to actually write our own bullshit? When we’d spend precious minutes crafting the perfect “Congratulations on your incredible journey” message to that coworker we barely remembered? Now we’re outsourcing even our fake sincerity to algorithms.
And here’s what really twists my bourbon-soaked mind: LinkedIn is actually proud of this. They’re offering AI writing tools to their premium subscribers like it’s some sort of privilege. “Hey, pay us extra and we’ll help you sound exactly like everyone else!” It’s like paying for a personality bypass.
The stats tell us there was a 189% spike in AI-generated content when ChatGPT dropped. That’s not professional networking evolving - that’s professional networking giving up. We’ve reached peak efficiency in our insincerity. Congratulations, humanity, we’ve automated our last remaining shred of authentic workplace interaction.
What kills me is the cottage industry that’s sprung up around this. There are startups - actual fucking startups - dedicated to helping people generate AI LinkedIn comments. We’ve got companies whose entire business model is helping other people fake being human. If that’s not a sign of the apocalypse, I don’t know what is.
And the kicker? LinkedIn’s head of “feed relevance” (yes, that’s a real job title, I checked twice) says they have “robust defenses” against low-quality content. Buddy, have you read your own platform lately? The whole thing reads like a parody of itself. It’s like they’re using AI to detect AI-generated content that’s imitating human-generated content that was trying to sound corporate in the first place. It’s inception for assholes.
But here’s the real gut punch: Gen Z is actually using this platform. Teenagers are on LinkedIn. They’re growing up in a world where AI-generated professional ass-kissing is the norm. They probably think this is how adults actually talk. God help us all.
You want to know the truth? The real reason this works so well is because we’ve all been faking it anyway. AI didn’t make LinkedIn fake - it just mechanized the fakery. It’s like we’ve been speaking in corporate Mad Libs for so long that we can now outsource it to machines, and nobody can tell the difference.
So here we are, in 2024, where machines are writing our professional love letters, and we’re all pretending this is progress. The robots aren’t coming for our jobs - they’re coming for our LinkedIn profiles first. And we’re paying them to do it.
I need another drink.
But before I go, here’s a thought: maybe the real test of humanity isn’t passing the Turing test anymore. Maybe it’s being able to write a LinkedIn post that actually sounds like it came from a real person. Though at this point, that might get you flagged as spam.
Keep it real, or don’t. Apparently, it doesn’t matter anymore.
P.S. This post was written by a human, through a haze of Wild Turkey and existential dread. No AI was harmed in the making of this commentary.
Source: Yes, That Viral LinkedIn Post You Read Was Probably AI-Generated