I know it’s popular to dump on LinkedIn.
I’m also a fan of the many “LinkedIn Lunatics” videos on YouTube.
But I was never a frequent user myself and only really made my profile active when I was job hunting.
Still, I understand why someone might think:
“I should get clothing advice from LinkedIn because it’s for professionals.”
Perhaps.
But probably only for a certain type of environment.
Because LinkedIn is not really ordinary professionalism.
It’s professionalism optimized for visibility.
Workplace signaling removed from the workplace
Your actual workplace already has its own signaling system.
But LinkedIn operates differently.
The platform extracts “professional identity” from the environment and turns it into a continuous performance.
You are no longer just connecting with old coworkers, sharing your resume or looking at job postings.
You are now performing employability.
That changes the type of clothing advice you receive too.
A lot of LinkedIn-style advice becomes less about ordinary environmental coherence and more about identity projection.
What do you want to communicate?
Competence?
Authority?
Approachability?
Leadership?
The clothing starts functioning more explicitly as semiotic language.
And naturally, most of that advice is going to reflect the perspective of the employer or institution.
That is not necessarily wrong.
But it is still an incomplete picture because workplaces vary and people vary too .
Professional identity gets flattened into an image
Most LinkedIn profile photos are trying to communicate roughly the same qualities:
- competence
- approachability
- stability
The visual language becomes extremely standardized.
- Neutral background and clothing.
- Shallow depth of field.
- Soft corporate lighting.
- Shoulders angled slightly toward the camera.
- Not too smiley.
Everything is optimized for immediate legibility .
You are compressing professionalism into a single readable image.
“Professionalism” performed continuously
This is probably the part people react to most strongly.
A lot of what gets labeled as LinkedIn lunacy is really exaggerated signaling.
The improbable stories.
The HR morality lectures.
The inspirational leadership reposts.
These little LinkedIn parables are rarely believable because nobody actually talks like that in real life.
The messaging is way too clean.
LinkedIn often feels less about people working and more about people performing the idea of being professional.
If you get laid off now, there is almost an expectation that you write a long public breakup letter to your company:
thanking them for the opportunity
wishing everyone the best
sharing what you learned
You may or may not do any of that privately in real life.
I’ve never done that in my entire life.
But online, the performance becomes expected.
I also think some people’s nervous systems tolerate that kind of identity-performance environment much better than others.
I realized fairly early in my life that I was probably not a great fit for large institutional environments for this reason.
The money was nice and definitely supported my aesthetic addiction.
But the more professional identity became continuously performed, monitored, and optimized, the more draining the environment started feeling to me.
I’m not against professionalism.
But I am against the constant performance of it.
That’s why I don’t think LinkedIn is always the best place to learn how to dress for work.
The platform rewards intensified professionalism.
But many ordinary workplaces function through much softer and more localized forms of coherence.
Sometimes the most socially successful person at work is not the most visibly optimized one.
Just the person who feels naturally settled inside the environment.