I need to make a painful confession: somehow, LinkedIn has become an important social network to me. This isn't necessarily due to LinkedIn's sparkling competence. To the contrary, LinkedIn is the Gerald Ford of social networks: the normal one left standing as the Richard Nixons and Spiro Agnews of social media imploded. We know we're getting something clumsy and boring, but not totally crooked — a relief.

But because I'm spending more time here, we need real talk: too many of you are using LLMs to generate content. LinkedIn itself cheerfully offers to help you "rewrite it with AI." The writing sucks — stylistically grating, riddled with emojis, single-sentence paragraphs, "it's not just… but also" constructions, and em-dashes. When you use an LLM, you may think you're generating plausible writing, but the tells are impossible to ignore. Bluntly, your intellectual fly is open: lots of people notice but no one points it out.

The problem isn't merely embarrassment: when you're obviously using an LLM, I don't know what's real and what's generated fanfic. You don't sound like you, so I stop reading. LLMs are incredibly useful for brainstorming, comprehension, and editing — but they are lousy writers and not you. Have confidence in your own voice and write your own content.