Making it onto LinkedIn Lunatics: a blessing or a curse?
“We’re running a sweepstake in the office about how long it’ll be before you make it onto LinkedIn Lunatics”
So, said a friend of mine a year ago.
At the time I didn’t know what LinkedIn Lunatics was but now I very much do 😔
What is LinkedIn Lunatics?
For those who don’t know it’s a thread on Reddit (a social media platform where users submit content and it gets voted and commented on — not usually in a positive way).
This particular thread was set up with the following mission: “ Sharing and discussing the LinkedIn characters who post a mix of rampant virtue signalling, cringeworthy titles, and other such stories”.
It appears one of my recent posts was sufficiently signalling, cringeworthy and more to have made it to the thread 😳.
What was the post and what happened?
The post itself was one of my weekly updates on my H1 2025 goals. It had been a frustrating week and I hadn’t actually made much progress against my goals so I was owning up to that.
The mistake I made was including a rather shocking photo of my toenail which had fallen off — this was to highlight the impact of overindexing on one of my goals (running 🏃♂️) to compensate that the other 8 had not really progressed at all.
I’ll hold my hands up and admit that I should never have posted that picture because within 10 minutes a friend of mine messaged me to say that it wasn’t appropriate and I took it down once I saw his message [which was about one hour after the original post].
I then had to go out for a meeting.
The meeting lasted a couple of hours, during which I didn’t check my phone 📵
However when I stepped out I noticed several missed calls and hundreds of messages 🤯.
It seemed not only had my post blown up on LinkedIn [for some reason LinkedIn still had it up] but that my post had been screen captured and shared on LinkedIn Lunatics 😱.
I immediately took down the post for a second time and then headed over to LinkedIn Lunatics to see what was being discussed.
I almost wish I hadn’t…
What did I find on LinkedIn Lunatics?
By the time I got there my post was trending and had over 200 comments and 1000 votes.
To be fair many of the comments were humorous and more about how ridiculous LinkedIn is.
Some comments actually offered running and podiatry advice to avoid toe nail injuries.
However those were the minority.
Most comments made personal slurs, in particular:
- That I’m a loser 😢
- That I have a failed business 💰
- That I must be fat and a shit runner 🏃♂️
- That I’ll never find love or hit any of my goals 💔
- That my personal hygiene is disgusting 🤢
- That my mental capabilities are limited 🧠
- That I should be publicly humiliated or harmed in some way 😱
There was a particular sub-thread that discussed my ethnicity and contained racist remarks [to be honest this is something I have become used to since I proudly started referencing my Palestinian roots and adopted the #PositivePalestinian hashtag on LinkedIn] 🇵🇸.
What’s more, people seem genuinely disappointed that I’d taken down the post thus depriving them of their fun.
What happened next?
I have to admit, it hit me hard and I was shocked, saddened, angered, distraught and much more.
I couldn’t really think of anything else that evening so I abandoned the remainder of my plans for the day and actually ended up going to bed early 🛌 .
Before that though a raft of thoughts flooded my mind:
- Maybe I should respond to all the comments directly
- Oh sh1t! What if my clients or family see the thread? [and I’m aware they may now be more likely that I’ve written this]
- What if I get banned from LinkedIn?
- How do I deal with the negative media and the impact it has on my business?
For a brief moment, it gave me an insight as to what it must be like to actually be in the public eye with so much written about you that isn’t positive.
It reminded about a statement a successful friend once said to me:
“Trust me, you don’t ever want to be famous or to go viral”
To be honest in the last 3 years since I started posting every day on LinkedIn, writing a weekly blog, recording 2–3 podcasts a week and gaining a following I’ve seen more and more the negative aspects of social media as I have encountered trolls, stalkers and more.
Still, there are always takeaways
It would have been easy to just forget about this incident and move on but that’s not me and I’ve always committed to using LinkedIn like a journal, sharing the highs and lows of being a Start-up Founder.
Having slept on it, my takeaways are:
- Not all views of your profile are good ones, some people are just mean — they probably don’t know you, but can’t resist the negative and feel the world needs to know their opinion/sarcastic comment; unfortunately in today’s world there are a sufficient number of these people and there are undoubtedly many reasons why they have become this way. It’s best not to engage with them
- Own up to your mistakes and rectify them sooner rather than later — I’m so glad I didn’t leave the post up longer and, even though painful, I’m glad my friends warned me
- Having great friends around you is priceless — without great friends I would have been much more exposed
- Don’t act impulsively — if I had weighed into Reddit in my anger responding to comments, I’m fairly certain it would not have ended well
- Having a sense check in place is important — I write a lot of online content in a vacuum and it is easy to lose your sense of what is and what isn’t appropriate; so having a way to validate that is important otherwise stuff like this may happen
- Occasionally sh1t happens — as per above, there will be the occasional screw up; it’s how you deal with it that matters
- How you respond to something going wrong is the real mark of your character — handle it badly and things only get worse
- Don’t overemphasise a situation — yes, this was bad but in the grand scheme of things I’m hoping most people didn’t even notice (know as the spotlight effect) and everyone will move onto tomorrow’s news; it’s a bit like popcorn in a microwave, eventually it will stop popping
- The longer it festers, the more it impacts the rest of your life — I’m sure this will still dwell on my mind for a while so I’ll expect a knock-on effect but I’ll try to move on
- There’s always another post just around the corner —get back on the horse sooner rather than later
Looking for a positive spin: It’s actually useful to see an unfiltered review of how you come across to a stranger…and LinkedIn Lunatics certainly facilitates that.
Funnily enough, one day on, the incident doesn’t seem to have effected my LinkedIn metrics. If anything I’ve had hundreds of people check out my profile in the last 24 hours and a few new followers so I hope they, and you, enjoyed the read.
I suspect a few of you may now go check out the LinkedIn Lunatics page and I’m OK with that; you do what you gotta do.
Whatever you do, whoever you are, as ever, it’s a pleasure to have you along for the journey 😊
Faris
Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness. Connect with him here
Success = IQ x EQ x FQ
