When Did LinkedIn Become Facebook With Better Lighting?

I wish I were making this up.

Somewhere, sometime, LinkedIn stopped being the “professional network” and turned into part highlight reel, part travel log, part personal advice column.

When did my feed start feeling like a family reunion?

I’m not imagining it. Trade publications now openly ask whether LinkedIn has gotten too personal, as confessional posts and vacation carousels crowd out the material people used to log in for. The place that once felt like a conference hallway now feels like a family reunion, right down to the oversharing cousin.

Yes, I know exactly how this sounds. A fifty-something guy shakes his fist and tells the personal-brand kids to get off his digital lawn. Fair enough. I’m also aware I’m late to this pity party, and that plenty of people made peace with LinkedIncoherence years ago.

Here’s my problem. I don’t get to opt out. What I do for a living requires me to be here, so I show up, begrudgingly, and scroll.

Let me be clear, though: it’s not all noise. I still learn from seasoned colleagues, sharp content creators, and genuine big thinkers who remind me why I used to love LinkedIn. Finding those people and their insights now is the trouble. They’re getting harder to spot in the pile, and most days I feel like I’ve been denied a seat at the cool kids’ table.

Slowing down to get a glimpse of the wreck

The scrolling is what gets me. It’s a dopamine hit without the hit. I finish a session feeling the way one feels after driving slowly past a car crash – ashamed for having looked, no better for having done it.

There’s a reason for this. Infinite dopamine-scrolling runs on the same variable-reward loop that powers a slot machine, the strongest form of behavioral reinforcement we know of. I keep pulling because the next post might be the good one. It rarely is.

The traffic accident also involves political content, with red posts colliding with blue posts, and the inevitable pileup of pro and con comments in their wake. If there was ever a time LinkedIn was non-partisan, those days are long gone. The climate is so charged now that the company built a switch to turn it off. When a platform introduces a feature to hide certain content, that tells you how much of it is there.

Photo first, insight second… if we’re lucky

LinkedIn and its members changed the rules, and I understand why. Engagement now starts with the image, as on Instagram, and the idea comes second. The data backs it up: multi-image posts pull noticeably more engagement than plain text, so, of course, our feeds are flooded with photos.

The trouble is that the photo often has nothing to do with the words. A hand-on-hip fashion pose against the big-city skyline introduces a post on how to write a lawyer bio. An endearing portrait of two small children accompanies their poster-parent’s Best/Super/Leading/Top Lawyers announcement. It’s clickbait wearing a blazer, an image chosen to stop your thumb first, and teach you something second – maybe. We spent years mocking engagement-bait broetry, then quietly did an about-face and embraced it.

This is the cruel part for Rain’s clients and other law firms. Lawyers are told to build authority the honest way: write the article, publish the insight, and show the work. Then they share the link, and LinkedIn hands them a sad little postage-stamp thumbnail with the title cramped beside it, all of it swallowed by the full-bleed selfie of an exotic cocktail two posts down. The thoughtful stuff loses to the loud stuff by design.

And while we’re here: when did candid people pics become glamour shots from a fashion shoot? Men and women both, soft focus, styled, and lit like the inside of a magazine. I have nothing against looking sharp. I don’t remember signing up for a professional network that graded on striking cheekbones, spray tans, and great hair. Of which I have none.

Hey, I get it. I feel the pull, too. I catch myself wondering whether my next post needs a bigger picture, a bolder crop, something to earn its place in the scroll. That’s the tell. The game changes you before you notice you’re playing it.

The ME in social MEdia

Here’s the thing. The ME was always sitting right there in social MEdia. Self-spotlighting is the whole premise; it was never a secret. What’s new is the volume, the way look-at-me-now drowns out thoughtful content, and the way WIIFM (what’s in it for me) quietly shoved aside WIIFU (what’s in it for you), which is us, the people doing the reading.

I don’t have a fix. I won’t tell you to log off, because I can’t, and I’d be a hypocrite for suggesting it. So I’ll keep posting and scrolling, probably crop a better photo next time, and gawk right along with the rest of you.

See you in the feed.