This morning, as I was about to look for a job on LinkedIn, I responded to someone’s post about how useless job postings in general (and LinkedIn’s in particular) were for finding a job. (I believe this is the definition of either irony or insanity.) The poster said that, based on his conversations, most people found their jobs either through networking or because they knew someone in the company. I commented that, indeed (no pun), only 3% of jobs were found from job postings and that on my last job search I had responded to 1,700 job postings and only gotten five interviews. (I eventually wound up getting a job through a temp agency which I said was, I supposed, like knowing someone in the company.)
My feed was immediately filled by people telling their own LinkedIn horror stories (as well as numerous advertisements), but no posts from people I was actually connected to. Similarly, a few days ago, I asked someone a question on Instagram in response to a post this person made about a friend of hers in the film industry. Although this person never answered my question, I immediately started seeing dozens of posts from her.
Is this the great future that was promised to us by A.I.?
In both these instances (and in business in general) the idea seems to be, “How can we remove humans from the equation?” If there’s a job that a software (in this case, A.I.) can do “better,” let’s replace the human with the software.
Two more examples:
I recently joined both Threads and Bluesky after deleting my Twitter account (because Elon Musk was instrumental in electing Donald Trump, donating $250 million to his campaign, as well as suppressing anti-Trump tweets and promoting pro-Trump tweets). After a few weeks, I have 131 followers on Threads and 52 on Bluesky. On both platforms, I see posts from basically the same two people (who must do nothing but post all day), to the point where I’ve started deleting some of them.
I just use these two platforms to vent my frustration at the election of Trump/Republicans, but I’m just preaching to the converted. I’m not actually changing anyone’s mind. So what's the point?
The only reason I stayed on Twitter after Elon Musk bought it was to be a “voice of the opposition” and look how well that worked out.
The best of these platforms might be Facebook, perhaps because it’s based on people I actually know. (I compare these other platforms to a bunch of people screaming into a vacuum.) But even here, out of 1,793 “friends,” I only see posts from about two dozen. And on all these platforms, the “conversation” seems to be very one-sided. It just seems to be people promoting or selling something (to be fair, I’m guilty of that as well), but rarely engaging in actual conversation.
Maybe I should just rely on my website and blog. If people are interested, fine, if not, that’s fine too. But, of course, then the issue becomes how to get people to pay attention to your website or blog, hence social media.
It’s a vicious cycle.
Now excuse me while I post this on Facebook, Threads and Bluesky.
