When LinkedIn jumps the shark

This week’s edition of Wishful Working was written by John Loeppky, a fellow freelancer who also lives in Saskatchewan! There are at least two of us. 😉 

Here are his words:

I wrote last year for one of my clients, IT Pro, that it feels both like a release and a horror show that LinkedIn is the most positive of platforms. To me, LinkedIn, for all its toxically positive capitalistic discourse, is one of the few social media spaces you can still be optimistic on and not face as intense a deluge of complaints.

Well, the last few days have tested that outlook and my patience.

There has been a flurry of conversation recently on the site about whether going to journalism school is a requirement for employment in the industry. You don’t need to go, but lots of journalists have devout connections to their alma maters and need a rationalization for their mountains of student debt. 

The trickle down effect of that has spilled out into broader discussions about freelancing norms.

One poster, for example, claimed that you can’t pitch a story idea to two outlets at the same time. Another likened freelance journalism to the type of work that will leave you broke and frustrated. Both are incorrect. You can make a living as a freelancer and you can simul-pitch, though I rarely do the latter.

My issue isn’t necessarily that these folks post this stuff—we’re all allowed to make nonsensical statements around our main digital water cooler—but that they do so with such faux authority. 

In the post that spoke about simul-pitching, the original writer admitted in the comments that they’d had not heard from their own editors about the practice.

In the case of the person posting about her thousands of dollars of debt being worth it, they are an adjunct professor with a real commitment to the academic realm. 

Maybe it’s because I’m from Saskatchewan—like Kara—a place that is Midwestian in its aversion to ego, but I don’t like this pontificating as if people are experts when they just want the brownie points from prospective followers. 

I’ll liken it to another part of my life. As a disabled person, there are times where you see someone get out of the hospital on a Monday and start an accessibility consulting company by Thursday. This isn’t a sustainable way to live. 

Becoming disabled—or beginning to understand yourself through that lens—is a months to years-long process, and the same is true in business. Show me someone who claims to have it all figured out in a matter of days and I’ll show you a charlatan. (Fun fact, the Charlatan is the name of Carleton University’s student paper.)

Point being, some things need time to settle. I’ve been freelancing full-time for three years and was freelancing before that for a few years. I've been working on journalism since 2011.

And I only now feel comfortable to speak publicly with any authority at all.

Part of that might be my anxiety and panic disorders, but part of it is that I don’t like showing my ignorance. 

So, what’s my suggestion? Well, I’m going to borrow from a previous career in disability art and culture.

The poet Sarah Kay, in her now famous Ted Talk, presents this exercise to get your creativity flowing: write down three things you know to be true. 

Here are my three things that I know to be true about my work life: 

• That I am a capable business owner who knows far more than some and far less than others.

• That I run my business through the lens of disability culture. If you’d like a primer on disability culture, I wrote the definition for the Canadian Encyclopedia.

• That I never want to return to a full-time in-person job.

Here’s my newly instituted rule. On LinkedIn, for the next six months, I am only posting about a topic if it falls into those three categories. 

So, I’ll hand it back to Kara and ask her what her three things are and feel free to email me at [email protected] if you’d like to share what your three things are.

Oooh, what a cool exercise! I actually had my answer all typed up, but then I decided that it could be its own separate newsletter… So you’re going to get my response to John’s prompt next week 😉 

Thanks again to John for guest authoring!

See you next week,

Kara

P.S. Got a question about self-employment, anti-hustle culture, business books, or something else?

John Loeppky is a disabled freelance journalist who lives and works on Treaty 6 territory in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His work has appeared for CBC, FiveThirtyEight, Healthline, VeryWell Mind, Defector, and a host of others. His goal in life is to have an entertaining obituary to read.