Everyone on LinkedIn is Now a World-Renowned Expert... in Everything!
Once upon a time, if you wanted to understand the nuances of global conflict or the balance of international trade, you cracked open a book, maybe listened to a panel of people with credentials longer than your arm. Today? You just scroll LinkedIn.
Apparently, all you need to become a respected voice on geopolitics is a half-lit headshot, a Canva carousel titled “5 Lessons from the Taiwan Strait,” and a firm belief that quoting The Economist makes you an economist. And don’t worry if you don’t know what tariffs actually do — just say “supply chain disruption” three times and the algorithm shall bless you.
It’s a renaissance of recycled headlines and overconfident hot takes. The same guy who once tried to automate Excel with duct tape is now posting threads on Chinese foreign policy. Thought leadership has become a party where everyone showed up dressed as the keynote speaker.
Platforms meant for professional development have morphed into open-mic nights for unsolicited economic analysis. And behind it all? Ego, algorithms, and an audience too polite to say, “Mate, what are you even talking about?”
Expertise? No Thanks, I Have Confidence and a Thesaurus
There was a time when the word expert implied... well, expertise. You know — that pesky little thing involving formal education, lived experience, and maybe a couple of painful professional failures that taught you what the hell you were talking about. But who’s got time for that now? In the age of LinkedIn Thoughtfluencing™, all you really need is confidence, a thesaurus, and enough free time to repurpose yesterday’s Financial Times article into a humble-bragging post about “global resilience.”
Welcome to the Dunning-Kruger Olympics, where depth of knowledge is optional but the podium is wide open for whoever sounds the most certain while knowing the least. Forget nuance — it’s all about tone. Just speak in sweeping generalizations, add phrases like “strategic inflection point” or “paradigm shift,” and voilà — you’re an international analyst. Never mind that your last real brush with economics was pricing out a GrabFood order with a discount code.
The platforms don’t help either. Algorithms reward noise over nuance. If you boldly declare “The West must rethink its economic posture in response to China’s assertive tariff diplomacy,” you’ll get applause — not because it’s smart, but because it sounds like it should be. And if you can package that nonsense in a pastel-colored Venn diagram? Viral. Thought leader status unlocked.
Real expertise moves slowly, speaks carefully, and admits when it doesn’t know. But online, admitting uncertainty is a sin — better to say something wrong with confidence than something thoughtful with hesitation. After all, hesitation doesn’t trend.
LinkedIn Is the Stage, and Every Clown Wants a Mic
Let’s talk about LinkedIn. It was once a platform for professional networking, a place to share accomplishments, job updates, and the occasional relevant article. But somewhere along the way, it mutated into a full-blown cabaret of corporate cosplay.
Today, it’s the Broadway of fake insight. Everyone’s in costume, everyone’s monologuing, and no one’s entirely sure who the audience is anymore. Want to stand out? Just write something painfully vague, add an inspirational emoji, and end with “curious to hear your thoughts 👇.”
The algorithm? It rewards emotional manipulation, not professional contribution. Which is why your timeline is now wall-to-wall with leadership fables that somehow involve a flat tire, a barista, or a sick relative who miraculously taught someone about quarterly growth strategy. It’s a carnival of self-important storytelling, where every post is a TED Talk in disguise and every insight is sponsored by Canva Premium.
And then there are the trend chasers. These folks have a sixth sense for sniffing out whatever’s hot — no matter how irrelevant. Armed with surface-level takes and bold-font carousels, they pounce on everything: new war? They've got geopolitical analysis and "3 takeaways for agile leaders." Chinese tariffs? “Here’s what this means for your morning stand-up.” Social unrest in a country they’ve never visited? “A timely reminder of the importance of empathy in remote teams.”
They’re not adding value. They’re just aggressively LARPing as subject matter experts — in economics, diplomacy, quantum computing, and whatever else is trending by lunchtime. All delivered with a grayscale headshot and the haunting sincerity of someone who believes their personal brand is the news.
And the worst part? They're often rewarded for it.
The Brand Strategy of Loud Irrelevance
Here’s the paradox no one on LinkedIn wants to hear over the sound of their own voice: yes, you’re getting attention — but not the kind that matters. You’ve built a following, sure. But it’s a crowd of people wondering how a junior product marketer from a SaaS startup suddenly became a thought leader on East Asian fiscal policy.
This is the quiet tragedy of the content-obsessed era: everyone’s chasing eyeballs, but forgetting to check if they belong to relevant humans. You’re not attracting potential clients, partners, or anyone remotely connected to your industry. You’re just drawing in fellow noise-makers who are also faking expertise and hoping someone important is watching.
It’s digital clout for clout’s sake. A game of likes, shares, and hollow applause that feels productive — until you realize you’ve been shouting into a stadium filled with people just waiting for their turn at the mic.
The worst part? None of this aligns with what these people actually do. You build Shopify plugins. Why are you offering commentary on BRICS de-dollarization strategies? Who is that for? What’s the CTA there — “Click here to optimize your checkout page and discuss sovereign currency swaps”?
Let’s be brutally clear: if your so-called “insight” has nothing to do with your domain, your expertise, or your lived experience, you’re not building a brand. You’re building a mirage. And when your audience can’t pin down what you stand for because you're too busy standing for everything, they eventually stop listening altogether.
Brand clarity doesn’t come from volume. It comes from focus. And no, being “passionate about global affairs” is not a business strategy — it’s a personality quirk... at best.
Insight Inflation and the Death of Silence
There was a time when not saying something was seen as a sign of intelligence. Discretion, nuance, the bold and beautiful art of shutting up — all once considered strengths. But that was before the Attention Economy rewired our brains and made silence feel like failure. Now, if you haven’t posted a thought piece within three hours of a breaking global event, you’re clearly “out of touch.”
We’re witnessing the rise of insight inflation — where opinions are produced at the speed of panic, and the intellectual value of each new “take” drops faster than crypto in a bear market. And the cause? A pervasive fear that if you’re not visible, you’re invisible. And invisibility, in the social media mind, is death.
So what do people do? They start posting. Furiously. Desperately. Thoughtlessly. They take barely-baked opinions, coat them in business jargon, and serve them up like hors d'oeuvres at a corporate retreat. Every global crisis is now a convenient segue into “leadership lessons.” Flood in Southeast Asia? “A reminder to remain adaptable.” TikTok legislation? “Let’s talk about data ethics in Q2 hiring strategies.”
It's not insight — it's content stuffing, SEO for the soul.
And we’re tired. We see you, Tom. You were giving out email automation tips last month and now you’re issuing commentary on U.S.-China semiconductor policy like you’ve got clearance at Langley. You don’t. You have a Grammarly Premium subscription and a lot of nerve.
The truth is, not everything requires your opinion. Real credibility sometimes comes from staying quiet, listening, and resisting the need to be seen as always in the know. But in the era of performative intellect, silence doesn’t just speak volumes — it gets drowned out completely.
Let’s set the record straight: this isn’t gatekeeping. No one’s asking you to return your ring light or delete your Canva account. It’s fine to have thoughts. It’s even commendable to share perspective. But let’s all agree to stop wrapping half-baked opinions in the tinfoil of faux-authority and serving them up like industry gospel.
Label your takes for what they are: opinions, not insights divinely downloaded into your consciousness between Slack huddles. And for the love of coherent personal branding, post within the orbit of what you actually do, know, or at least think about regularly. You don’t need to be a one-trick pony, but please, stop being a 78-trick donkey stumbling across the entire news cycle in search of likes.
Because when everyone becomes an “expert,” real expertise quietly exits the room. And when your personal brand includes commentary on everything from Turkish inflation to TikTok bans, people stop listening. You become white noise with a logo.
Thought leadership isn’t about being early. It’s about being right, relevant, and rooted. So please, just chill.