Dissecting the Rant of a LinkedIn Lunatic

You ever ask a question and have someone react completely differently than you expected? I mean they come back with something so over the top, you replay what you asked in your head to see how they could ever respond that way?

Last week, a friend of mine sent me an email after reading the post about how I handle the LinkedIn mistake way too many people make. Her simple question (Just saw your invite to connect. I was just wondering what prompted your interest in connecting with me on LinkedIn?) led to the most overly dramatic message I’ve ever seen on Linkedin. If you have one that can top it, I’d be surprised.

Now let’s play a game of how many things went wrong in this note. Can you guess the first phrase that catches my eye?

I’m not sure exactly

I don’t know if people are out there just inviting every name they come across in the same city, but something is clearly wrong if you have no clue why you wanted to connect with someone on Linkedin.

Interestingly enough though, this is a professional networking site, this is not some kids Facebook over social media MySpace a reverbnation sharing music or for that matter exists for anything other than professional networking.

This section makes little sense, especially the references to Facebook and Myspace. Yes, Linkedin is different than either of those social networks, but of the three of these, Linkedin is the last place I’d expect to see people accepting invitations to connect from total strangers. This interaction only affirms the need to vet people thoroughly before bringing them into your professional network, online or not.

I find it interesting that women that want to be in a professional career field and work with men, are still defensive in some sort of a sexist way, thinking that men somehow have anterior or alternative motives for connectivity because they’re always so agenda driven for personal reasons.

Seriously?! Delusional: nothing else quite describes a person who sees sexism and prejudice from someone asking for context of a Linkedin request. You almost have to wonder if there was any alcohol involved in this passionate piece of writing.

I have an expensive network so I suppose I don’t need another contentious woman who’s concerned about her privacy or somehow connectivity in a network of professionals.

Misogynist much? It takes a special kind of person to expect unconditional acceptance by everyone just because it’s a “social” network. Maybe the women he encounters have some reservations.

But I see that you’re in the insurance business which is not made up of professionals anyway since it’s something that’s mandatory for people to comply with in order to stay legal we all must maintain insurance which isn’t there for us when we have calamities anyway because the insurance companies are all for profits. Congratulations on your illustrious career field that everybody is obligated to have a part in even though none of us want to be part of it.

I’m kind of impressed by the fact he was able to seamlessly blend a personal attack and take a shot at an entire industry of professionals. I bet he had an insurance claim rejected at some point in his past and never quite got over it.

So except my invitation or not I suppose it’s a relevant to my group because we have people better looking forward to using our collective talents and initiatives and our networks to accomplish things for ourselves personally and collectively for our communities.

I know I said I was going to ignore grammar, but this section screams out for assistance from a comma or two, and possibly some missing words. I can’t tell if he’s insulting her looks (people better looking), saying he knows people who have some gift to see the future (better looking forward), or claiming he has more skilled people than her (better people). Your guess is as good as mine.

Good luck with your woman’s agenda and good luck being defensive. I wish you well in the insurance business maybe if that doesn’t work out you could get an illustrious certification in real estate or better yet, you could get a six-week certified massage therapist and really talk to people.

Not so surprisingly, master networker here takes a dig at real estate professionals and massage therapists, which is a little random, but what I really want to know how is how he knows Diana’s agenda? I double checked her Linkedin bio just in case I missed it but saw no mention of any “woman’s agenda” or any of the other claims made in this email.

I guess I’ll just keep my can exit 3,000,000 instead of 3,000,001

I’m going to go out on a limb here and chalk this up to a good old-fashioned Napoleon complex, assuming that meant to say connections instead of “can exit”.

So what did we learn from this Linkedin rant?

A few things come to mind:

1. Mostly that this either failed at spelling or needs to change to a phone with better voice recognition.
2. Some people don’t know how to keep to themselves when they have nothing nice to say
3. It’d be awesome if we could somehow weed out the morons before allowing people to open a social media accounts.

Until then, this semi-public shaming will have to do.