April 11, 2021

April 11, 2021

Spent the evening on LinkedIn for the first time in I don’t know how long. What a strange alternate universe, presenting our “professional” selves overly conscious of our “Branding” and entirely inauthenticity. And yet, there I am looking at updating my profile, tweaking my job history to make me look more attractive to future potential hiring supervisors - hating every moment. 

But I browse the cliches, the “out of the box thinkers,” the “entrepreneurs,” - all the things we are supposed to value, but really don’t. Still we build our facades in the hopes that no one will really look through them to judge us with any accuracy. There is always Twitter to display our snarky hot takes, Facebook to enumerate and demarcate the boundaries of our tribe. Instagram for our fantasy life come true. 

But is it really any different - from the high school clubs joined to get into a better college, the clothes we wear to also signal our status and subculture. Social media gets a lot of blame for perpetuating our inauthenticity, but we’re we ever really “authentic” in the first place. Then again who are we if not our aspirations and our fantasies - that liminal angst between being and becoming, the shortcomings we hope to overcome.