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Ask HN: Why are so many "AI evangelists" posting such insufferable content?

13 points by seattle_spring ↗ HN
My LinkedIn feed is absolutely unreal right now. 90% (I don't even think I'm exaggerating) of the posts in my feed are from connections who have changed their title to something like "AI Thought Leader | AI Native | Thought Coaching". They post *daily* about something LLM/agentic. The biggest problem is that it's never "hey check out this cool thing", it's "if you're not doing this, you're a dinosaur who will be left in the past."

Other common content is regurgitating blog / Twitter folks from "AI influencers", associated with statements like, "Boris McAI said software engineering is dead. Here's 5 reasons why he's right."

I felt this way a bit when cryptocurrency was at its height, but it never got this embarrassing or self-fellating. How do so many of my connections (more than 800 at this point) have literally zero shame? Hell it's not even first-degree connections.

50 comments

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Qision
> My LinkedIn feed

Do you seriously use that?

snicky
Not OP and I don't, but I know a few people who are very active on LI with their daily self-promotion posts only barely disguised as thoughtful remarks about the industry and this seems to be helping them to get into upper mgmt roles in companies most of us know here. It feels true even for people who weren't doing particularly great when I worked with them to put it politely.
witos2
LinkedIn posters are 90% people who could be hit by a bus and leave the world a better place afterwards.
dinkleberg
It is a true hellscape. It is useful when looking for work, but that is about it. Though it isn't without comedy. Seeing former co-workers posting about their keys for success and about how they've made it when you know damned well that they do worse than mediocre work is always a laugh.
srbsa
Don't you remember the time that people were solving the 'Strait of Hormuz' crisis on LinkedIn with lines drawn on maps and showing their 'problem-solving' skills?

... or was it just my feed?

playorizaya
LinkedIn was always sooo fake and bad as in it was a living nightmare dystopia some of the shit people would write.

I often wondered: Is this how you get promotions? No way does that actually work or do anything... And then I'm like holy shit is it genuine??? Is this really coming from the heart and I'm the cold, dead, psychopath who can't appreciate a genuinely thoughtful update from a corporate peer?

I had to get out of there.

I'm not on LinkedIn anymore... but I imagine it's even worse now that all the b2b saas posters have gone full agentic.

You never go full agentic.

maxrev17
No one provides any value in their posts. I want to try to generate leads for my business and I’m told to use LinkedIn. I’m trying to provide some value - useful things such as how to configure home assistant to see if kids devices were pulling data in the night (when they should have been asleep), etc. it’s not exactly getting the back patting as ‘trillion dollar markets’ musings or soc2 congratulations… but if one person benefits I’ll be happy . But yes that does mean I’m a LinkedIn wanker… can’t beat em, join em!
CM30
LinkedIn doesn't really reward meaningful content. People there are just looking for meaningless business related platitudes at the expense of all else.

Well, that and based on my experience, most AI 'evangelists' tend to be pretty bad at coming up with creative ideas in general. Many of them are basically the same grifters that tried to cash in on crypto and NFTs, except with a new fad of choice.

mrdependable
I think of LinkedIn like walking into a Tony Robbins event. At least, what I imagine they are like from those old infomercials.
bitbasher
To be fair, Theo Browne was insufferable even before the AI content.
sloaken
Those that can, Do.

Enough said.

add-sub-mul-div
Maybe it's the mediocre people who are most excited about AI because they see it as equalizing them with more interesting and original people.
jdlshore
I think it’s more that they can’t recognize the downsides of AI. They work with AI and it’s so smart! And magical! They don’t have the expertise to recognize the problems in its output, and they’re confused by complaints. It looks like stubborn resistance to them, so they turn to evangelism to try to get people to “see the light.” They don’t engage with legitimate criticism because they don’t understand it.

(That and the normal herd of grifters who pile on to every fad.)

cedws
What worries me is how it will be harder to differentiate the two now. I don’t want to work with people who just completely delegate their thinking to LLMs all day, but how do you effectively filter them out as an interviewer/interviewee?
deafpolygon
Talk to them, without a computer or device as an intermediary. You’ll find out quickly… as they often will have relegated the bulk of their thinking to LLMs.
cedws
I've always preferred in person interviews on both sides, but since COVID it's gone out of fashion unfortunately.
Breza
I recently hired for a tech position on my team. I ended up hiring an amazing internal applicant. I consider myself lucky. The hiring process has gotten awful on both sides in recent years.
olivierestsage
I’m going to get this post as a tattoo. Somewhere really visible to maximize its reach- maybe the face.
xg15
Who unironically writes "thought leader" as their job description?
seattle_spring
I just went to check-- I have 6 first-degree connections with the phrase "thought leader" in their title. This out of about 800 connections, all of which are people I've met in-person. Some real-world examples:

* "Independent Thought Leader and Consultant"

* "Strategy, Innovation, and Distruptive Technology thought leader in the Hyperscale/Cloud business"

* "AI Thought Leader + Founder at <company name>.ai"

* "C++ expert and agile process thought leader"

When expanded to 2nd degree connections, I get more than 10 pages of results when searching for the phrase "Thought Leader" (in quotes, so it's not a fuzzy search phrase).

idontwantthis
If I made my job title "Thought Follower" I wonder how many people would know it's a joke.
andrei_says_
People? It’s an increasingly wrote-only medium where the writing is automated.
jw-open
The term of AI is definitely overused on the internet especially on social media platforms. It might be easier to hook up with AI bots, and scraping tools.

The fundamentals behind AI is the same thing behind traditional software systems. So the only thing changed are the balance system inside the AI evangelists — the needs to be recognized is much stronger than the needs to be a great software engineer.

I am using a metaphor, do you want to play soccer in the playground? Or do you want to be a great fan of soccer? Have you seen soccer evangelists to be great soccer players?

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icedchai
I see the same thing. The majority of their posts are, of course, AI-generated and incredibly verbose.
stAInley
You missed the AI generated graphic to go with the post.
seattle_spring
Or an unrelated half-naked thirst trap beach selfie. You know, to "drive engagement."
jryan49
Then why are you reading LinkedIn...
coldtea
>My LinkedIn feed

That's your problem right there.

When has anyone's LinkedIn feed been anything else than blatant attempts at self-promotion, spam, cliche business advice and empty work-related platitudes (a lot of it AI generated itself nowadays, for extra-slopiness).

lyfeninja
Fake it til you make it baby!

They're just jumping on the hype train but can you really blame them? They've been hearing about how their job will be replaced, how they need to upskill with AI, and they see everyone else doing it. Many probably have no real skills so they're just trying to survive.

Grimblewald
> why is linkdin shit?

Because linkdin is shit? Ez.