Of course it's just personal marketing, but I still find it a bit exaggerated.
Every time somebody participates in a community, they take on a role in that community's story and that role has a certain shape.
Many people behind the posts here on HN are far less serious than what's suggested by their posts because the community sees humor as too easy a way to derail curiosity and intellectualized dialog. And people are generally more contrarian here than off-site because the community celebrates a good and interesting debate as a way to raise and explore questions. etc etc
Is a HN user being artificial when they choose not to be snarky? Are they being artificial when they pick into an argument they'd have shrugged off elsewhere.
It's no different at LinkedIn. It's tone of positivity may not suit you, but it's not really a different kind of behavior than you see here or on Facebook or Reddit or whatever.
For ordinary participants, HN means a fun conversation, inspiring articles, maybe a life-changing job offer or FOSS collaboration for a small percentage of those who comment, already a small proportion of HN's readers. Y Combinator effectively runs HN on a shoestring for a small amount of public relations influence, and I would guess that HN's existence doesn't even make the agenda at YC board meetings.
With LinkedIn, every post and association is directly linked to your professional image. You can't view LinkedIn posts without an account, so passive consumption of interesting articles simply cannot happen by design. Microsoft runs LinkedIn to legally* extract vast amounts of personal information in order to exert influence on job markets for their paying customers, and they clearly thought the control was worth purchasing for US$2620000000.
The point I would like to make is that although the forced positivity isn't a fundamentally different dynamic from HN's forced intellectualism, almost everyone on HN voluntarily participates, but opting-out of LinkedIn's positivity proletariat can have dire consequences for one's livelihood.
* where law is defined as 'might is right'
I almost feel like if you are not praising your oppressors on li you might as well be silent!
I think the news that teens love LinkedIn is as much of a reflection of the toxic positivity of LinkedIn, which to kids without life experience could be seen as “maturity”, as it is a reflection of the toxicity of other social media. LinkedIn is kind of a mix of what happens when you keep kids out, but also, the consequences for what you post and share and comment are immediately impactful to your employment. You don’t hide your LinkedIn from an employer like you do TikTok or Instagram. So you have to be much more careful about what you post.
an example: a whole thread of managers and HR people celebrating a proposed Slack plugin that does sentiment analysis on every message & automatically reports you to HR if you're insufficiently enthusiastic (or god forbid, use sarcasm) when talking to your boss or reports
did I post about what a horrible idea that is? hell no! that might affect my livelihood!
and so the deranged circlejerk went on unchallenged, as I closed my tab and quietly prayed I would never have to work with any of these absolute maniacs
Watching people plaster crying faces and poetry over the 'washing machine' sucking the negative emotions out them, is something else.
No wonder the rules about expression are strict, their getting stripped of real emotional security by engaging with that.
I still prefer shining my shoes, dusting up my personal website and putting on a nice suit to look good for a job.
No heart-slurping profilicity, thanks. Ugh I feel dirty even posting this...