At best, LinkedIn is a land of false modesty, hyperbole, and pretense. At worst, it’s an Orwellian hellscape where words like “humbled” mean precisely the opposite and where everyone is proud, honored, and delighted – all the time.
Which words are among the most used and abused?
Honored
Not too long ago, if someone described herself as honored, it meant that great respect had been conferred upon her by someone else, most likely somebody with a higher status or position.
On LinkedIn, everyone is honored for every little thing, and the honor comes from who knows where. “I’m honored to have finished my six-month probationary period.” “I’m honored to have been given a parking space on level minus-one.” “I’m honored to have been told by the cleaning lady that the lasagna I heated in the microwave smelled better than the fish I bought yesterday.”
Grateful
Gratitude, one would assume, is an appropriate feeling directed at the teacher who let you retake the final exam, the kind couple who adopted you, or the surgeon who reattached your big toe with only minimal scarring – scars that she was able to make look like “AC/DC” as per your request. On LinkedIn, however, users are grateful for just about everything. “I’m grateful to RSP Enterprises for trusting me enough to listen to my pitch to be their new hand soap supplier.”
Proud
In the past, pride was an emotion you only felt after having done something noteworthy, such as solving a particularly difficult problem on your kid’s algebra homework or inventing a new cocktail that becomes wildly popular among Brazilian bikini models because it’s claimed to be low-calorie despite the fact it’s not.
For many LinkedIn users, being proud is a way to deflect attention from someone else under the guise of offering congratulations. If a LinkedIn user claims to be proud of someone, it’s because they want to claim partial credit or say, “Hey, look at me – I know this interesting person!”
Delighted
It used to be that if you were delighted, it was because you had enjoyed something that gave you real pleasure or happiness: homemade lemon cake, a spring picnic, or season 1 of “Cobra Kai.”
LinkedIn users of today are always delighted, but usually for the most ridiculous or unexceptional reasons, such as meeting people at a professional conference or carrying out normal job functions. “I was delighted to see Jae Jun Shin and his team at the job fair – just like every other last Thursday of the month.”
Thrilled
Once upon a time, if you said you were thrilled, it was because you’d survived an attack by a Bengal tiger or gone skydiving for the first time.” Not anymore. LinkedIn users are thrilled about the most uninteresting professional experience, often ones that are quite the opposite of thrilling, such as learning how to use new accounting software.
Humbled
Perhaps the most troubling misuse of language in all of LinkedInlandia is “humbled.” First, if someone were feeling humbled (meek, modest, submissive), he would never announce it to the world, right? Secondly, if you really do feel humbled, it should be because you spent the last 16 months volunteering at a leper colony, or because you challenged an 80-year-old Kung Fu master to a fight and had your butt kicked – not because you listened to a one-hour talk by the CEO of a data-mining company.
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Originally published by RTL Today
