The Four Posts You Meet on LinkedIn

The Four Posts You Meet on LinkedIn

LinkedIn just added its "Seems like AI slop" button.

This is fun timing because for the last 3 weeks I have been collecting posts off of the platform and analyzing them, trying to figure out what’s going on.

Why? Because something about how a lot of us are writing on LinkedIn these days is nagging at me.

At first I thought I was just pissed off that we were using AI to write things. You know the tells, the em dashes, the short sentences with short paragraphs, the oddly round numbered statistics, and super generic stories.

But then I realized, it's not those AI-prompted posts that bother me as much. Sure, they are pure slop, but we all know it. But the ones that were frustrating me the most are the ones where someone writes a beautiful story, a heartfelt message, or a super personal narrative — but lets AI absolutely neuter it.

That's when I realized that I really don't care about em dashes — I actually kinda love them still — but what I'm starving for is authenticity.

All that to say, after analyzing (yes, with AI) the content of 57 semi-random posts on LinkedIn, I have created a rubric for understanding what's happening on this here platform.

And the biggest question this has led me to is this: why are we posting at all?

If we are posting to feed an algorithm, what's the point?

With that said, I — along with my handy-dandy AI assistant — have identified at least four types of posts we see on LinkedIn.

Low Substance / High Pretense These are the posts, and thankfully this is rare, where it's low content, low meaning, and it’s incredibly obvious it was written with AI. These are so low effort that it’s almost laughable. If you read it out loud to your kids, they would roll their eyes and say it’s super not cool. No one knows why it was posted or, frankly. what in the world it really even means. This is likely what that slop button is really for.

Low Substance / Low Pretense These posts aren’t bad. They are just usually low-effort, low-thought posts. They make a good point... they are just... forgettable. We see them and think, “I guess, but why did you use AI to write and post this — or even post this at all? Feel free to keep posting these; most of us will just keep ignoring them.

High Substance / High Pretense These are the posts with genuinely meaningful and obviously true stories about obviously real people — but written with an AI prompt and some polish. This is where we try to "humanize" the AI-produced content. These posts are well-intentioned — but in the end they land a little flat because a potentially beautiful story gets unintentionally neutered of its emotion and meaning. It’s like dressing up for your wedding day in a corporate suit. The substance just doesn’t match the occasion.

High Substance / Low Pretense Every once in a while, when all is right with the world, I come across a genuinely human post. It’s not technically efficient; it’s filled with extra words AI would never use, and fairly unvarnished. These are the posts that, written in a plain voice, are a breath of fresh air on this platform. More of these please.

So what’s my point?

I come back to my OG villain: efficiency.

Yes, it's faster to have a conversation with AI about a story, feed it some details, and have it written for you. And yes, some of us aren't great writers, so it makes the writing process a lot easier. I get it, I genuinely do.

But easier doesn't make it better. Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden, 'now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.' I think that’s what I am getting at.

What if we stopped chasing the perfect post and just wrote a good, human one?”

I would rather read a heartfelt post that was a little extra wordy and a little less technically perfect than one written by AI with all the humanity stripped away.

Here's my suggestion. Don't prompt AI to write you a post. Maybe have AI prompt you to write a post.

Then, write the post. And yeah, use AI to edit, spell-check, and fix your grammar. God knows I need to.

And sure, use some em dashes and maybe even slip in an “it’s not x, it’s y” clause. Because at the end of the day, the issue isn’t style, or em dashes, or weird AI writing styles. I can prompt AI to write without those things, and it can still lack substance and be full of pretense.

If it means you don't post as often, I think that's okay. That might just make LinkedIn a more meaningful place to hang out.