Explaining LinkedIn to My 74-year-old Dad

Few things bring the concept of "cringe" into sharp relief like explaining your job to your 74-year-old father.

For 40 years, he worked a 128-acre dairy farm near Palmerston North in New Zealand's North Island. When he retired and sold the property, he was struck by something he was ill-equipped to deal with—boredom.

Farming was a daily exercise of maintenance and to-dos: A cow pulled up?lame, a fence needed mending, and a tree had fallen in last week's winds—and that was all before lunch. ?

Now, he had nothing to do, which was melting his brain. "I might go down to Bunnings and see what's happening there," he said.

Spoiler alert:?Nothing was happening down at Bunnings.

The peculiarities of "city work" always fascinated him. He sees the banalities of the white-collar world with the curiosity of a marine biologist mapping ancient algae.

"There was a bit on the news about London pubs," he told me on a recent call. "And they're closing at a rate of one a day, so they want to get you blokes back into the office so you can go get pissed at lunchtimes!"

He snorted. "Having a beer on your lunch break! You'd never get me back to work!"

I introduced him to the post-COVID phenomenon of "Thirsty Thursday," which he found both beguiling and sad.

"Don't know what's worse: pulling a sickie because you're hungover or clocking in hungover at home. You'd be equally useless."

"Never a big deal,?a?lot of?people just end up wasting time on LinkedIn,"?I said.

The neurons in my father's brain started firing to combine "Linked"?and "In"?and have them equal something nearing a coherent thought.

"What's?linking in?"??

It's like Facebook (Facebook, that's a thing he's heard about, right? Yes, we've?Facebook called?before. He used the wrong camera for half of it. For 20 minutes I was talking to his fridge) but about work.

"Righto,"?he said. "Facebook for your job. How does that work?"

To be perfectly honest,?Dad, I'm not sure if it does.?Imagine a party in a community hall—a bit of a 'do'?to use the parlance of your time—but everyone is trying to be professional.

"It sounds bloody awful to me."

No, no, sometimes people share pictures of their dogs.

"Why would you want to see a picture of somebody's dog at work?"

A carefully curated set of best practices and digital alchemy working together to game an increasingly capricious algorithm has told us that mixing business with pleasure is ingratiating to other white collarites and almost certainly a recipe for success.

"What's that got to do with dogs?"

Well, dogs are just an example. Businesspeople use LinkedIn to network and build connections, but talking about work has a limited shelf life, so you talk about your dogs, kids, shoes, or whatever you want.

"What do you get out of it?"

You often get tricked into reading the transcript of a terrible conference keynote about content marketing, which is then fixed with a selfie that's equal parts 'adorable'?and 'mugshot'. You think about an aspect of your job for 30 seconds and immediately forget about it when an email comes through.

My dad sighs. "Well, Michael, it sounds like a huge waste of bloody time."

You understand LinkedIn more than you think you do, Dad.