To prompt or not to prompt? AI, LinkedIn and shakespeare
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.”
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It
It’s 2:33 AM, and my laptop glows like a judgmental gibbous moon.
My wife has long since fallen asleep.
But I’m wide awake.
Scrolling LinkedIn.
Again.
On my screen, the endless feed of 2024 unfolds.
Yes. It’s yet another debate about AI.
Should you use it to write posts? Or does it make you a traitor to humanity?
Does its love of em-dashes signal genius or sociopathy? What’s an ‘em-dash’ anyway?
Is it any good, or are we all just pretending it is so we don’t get left behind? It was always FOMO, after all.
The post in question features a screenshot of ChatGPT “writing Shakespearean sonnets about supply chain optimization.”
Its caption reads:
“When supply chains are chaos, AI brings order. Even in iambic pentameter! Fun!”
Poetic efficiency or corporate cosplay? I’m not sure.
Now, I’m horrified.
But I’m hooked like a TikTok fish on confirmation bias.
I refresh the feed.
Only to land on the next layer of LinkedIn absurdity: hype, ghost recruiters, and fraud.
Welcome to the Hunger Games, LinkedIn Edition
Here’s the thing about LinkedIn in 2024.
It’s not just a place where people argue about AI.
It’s also a place for professional drama.
No, we’re not talking about Jennifer Lawrence.
On LinkedIn, it’s all sound and fury.
Everyone is shouting into the void, hoping the void offers up a six-figure remote job and free mentorship on the side.
A tale told by influencers, full of keywords, signifying nothing.
Take the recruiters, for instance.
You’ve seen them.
The offers promising you the world in a single DM, like Iago whispering sweet nothings into your beleaguered ear.
“Hi [First Name], I saw your profile and think you’d be a great fit for a Dynamic Synergy Architect role at a stealth-mode startup.”
But when you respond?
Nothing but dynamic silence.
I imagine the recruiter vanishing into another dimension where they’re sourcing “top talent” for a blockchain-powered kombucha company.
Finally, there are the fraudsters.
The ones whose posts always start with:
“I came to this country with $11 in my pocket, and now I own six companies and a yacht named HODL.”
They claim to know the secret to success, but oddly enough, the secret always involves buying their eBook for $99.99.
It’s a problem when the merchant of Venice had better terms than these guys.
I scroll past one of these posts now—a guy in a three-piece suit standing in front of a private jet that probably belongs to someone else.
His caption reads:
“If you’re not grinding 25/8, you don’t want it bad enough.”
Bad enough for what?
Bankruptcy?
Felonious hyperbole?
A LinkedIn jail sentence for overusing the term grind?
AI debates in the land of hype
One more thing about AI.
Because we’re all obsessed with it.
Loving it.
Hating it.
And when in the land of LinkedIn, it seems like it has been the evergreen topic of 2024.
Every third post is an “insightful thread” (read: self-promotional diatribe) about how to “leverage generative AI to 10x your productivity and revolutionize your synergy pipelines.”
One thread praises AI’s precision with em-dashes.
Another laments how it “lacks the soul of a true storyteller.”
A third argues that if you’re not already using AI for your content, you’re basically a medieval serf waiting to be replaced by a steam engine.
I once joined the debate myself, posting a poll that asked, “Is AI empathetic?”
The responses were as unhinged as you’d expect:
47% voted “Yes, but only when it’s properly fine-tuned.”
29% said “No, empathy is inherently human.”
And 24% just wrote “BLOCKCHAIN” in the comments, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t even an option.
How do we even know anything anymore?
The problem with LinkedIn isn’t that people are debating AI.
It’s that the debates feel like professional cosplay.
Everyone is playing a role.
The Innovator.
The Skeptic.
The Humblebragging Thought Leader.
And none of it feels real.
I mean, how do we even know anything anymore?
Half the posts on LinkedIn are ghostwritten by AI.
The other half might be written by bots, too.
And the rest?
My money is on the theory that they’re written by people so burned out in the brain by the FOMO of social media stardom that they’re just mashing their fat fingers onto the keyboard and praying for likes.
Is everyone wearing blindfolds? What are we even doing anymore?
I tell myself, breathe. Breathe, Ratner.
It is hard to tell.
You do need to be a professional fact-checker to know what’s actually true anymore.
Well, this line of reasoning isn’t helping my insomnia.
It’s now 3:14 in the morning.
I close my laptop and stare at the ceiling.
Outside, the fog is rolling in, thick and gray.
Somewhere in San Francisco, a Waymo is probably stalled in the middle of an intersection on top of a pedestrian, as confused as I am about what it’s supposed to do next.
The takeaway (or whatever this is)
LinkedIn in 2024 is a place where everyone is debating whether AI is good, bad, or just really into punctuation.
It’s also a place where hype, ghost recruiters, and fraudsters thrive like weeds.
And yet, we keep coming back.
Why?
Maybe it’s because we hope to stumble across something real—a connection, an idea, a post that doesn’t make us roll our eyes.
Perhaps, as the Bard might say, "The fault, dear reader, is not in AI, but in ourselves."
Or maybe it’s because, like AI, we’ve been trained to keep going, to keep producing, to keep “engaging,” even when we’re not entirely sure why.
So, tell me: Are you more empathetic than a bot?
Do you care about AI’s em-dashes, or are you just here for the drama?
Let’s argue in the comments.
Or don’t.
Either way, the ghost recruiters won’t notice.
Spread the word: Join The Water Cooler crew
If you’ve laughed, cringed, or just need someone to scream into the LinkedIn void with, why not share The Water Cooler with a friend?
Tell them it’s LinkedIn—but funnier.
