On LinkedIn, making the case for contradiction

Janney Hujic didn’t break LinkedIn. She revealed it. Her now-infamous post — the sentimental encounter with “Piyush Gupta” at Bali Airport, the tearful parting, the later correction — was, for a brief, glorious moment, the perfect LinkedIn story. Self-contained, emotional, mildly aspirational. It had a celebrity cameo. It performed vulnerability exactly how we’ve been taught to reward it: just enough to engage, not enough to make anyone uncomfortable.

That it turned out to be untrue felt inevitable, not shocking.

What mattered was that it worked. For a few hours, it hit every note we’ve been conditioned to applaud. It went viral not because it was true, but because it was optimised — a strategy honed by thousands of posts before it that taught us what lands. We — the users, the audience, the engagers — validated it. We built the architecture where sentiment and name-dropping travel further than substance. We rewarded the form, not the fact.

It’s tempting to treat this as a cautionary tale about truth or social media ethics. But that misses the real question: why did it feel so believable? The answer is that we’ve seen this exact narrative hundreds of times. The serendipitous airport encounter. The warm mentor figure. The insight that arrives just in time for the character limit. It’s a genre now.

We didn’t invent Janney but we did build the stage she performed on.

If she’d gotten away with it, we would’ve liked, commented, maybe even cried a little. But because she didn’t, we got to moralise on our high horses, pretending we would’ve known better. And in doing so, we missed the point. If anything, Janney-gate is evidence that we’re not ready for the platform we claim to want. Because what LinkedIn rewards above all else isn’t reflection. It’s polish. 

Janney didn’t fail because she lied — she failed because her lie didn’t land.

The cult of the curated

Spend enough time on LinkedIn and you’ll notice the cadence: the same humblebrags, the same full-circle arcs, the same “I almost didn’t post this” disclaimers. There’s a syntax to it now — professionalised vulnerability that feels rehearsed. 

Everyone’s telling their truth, and yet it all sounds the same.

Still, this isn’t an attack on sincerity. In fact, the most effective LinkedIn users are often deeply sincere. But sincerity has been algorithmically trained to perform in very specific ways. The story, for one, must resolve. The takeaway must inspire and the self must be aspirational. It’s not enough to share — you must share with purpose. Preferably in bullet points. Bonus marks if you have emojis.

What we get then is a feed dominated by the performance of self, optimised and Brasso-ed for public consumption. For all our talk of “showing up fully,” we have instead created a space where doing so means showing up in a very narrow format. Say too little and you’re disengaged. Say too much and you’re unprofessional. Too funny and you’re not serious. Too serious and you’re not “relatable.”

The danger isn’t that people are faking it. It’s that they’re shaving off so many edges to be palatable that what’s left is a sad silhouette. The curated self, many insist, fits better in a 1:1.85 aspect ratio which, as it happens, gets more engagement.

Add to that the fact that LinkedIn ties performance to professional identity, and the stakes soar. We’re not just liked, we’re endorsed. We’re not just followed, we’re hired, recommended, invested in. So we learn to be seen in ways that get us rewarded.

The LinkedIn coach gold rush

And where there’s pressure, there’s profit. Enter the LinkedIn coach who are hired to frame skills and package thinking. Many now offer courses promising to unlock the algorithm, craft the perfect post, and elevate your “personal brand.” And people are paying — thousands — because they’re overwhelmed by the pressure to show up consistently, insightfully, and strategically. This is especially so for leaders and job seekers where visibility is currency.

In other words, authenticity is no longer a feeling. Rather, it’s a strategy, deployed in service of engagement metrics.

Admittedly, some coaches are helpful. Others, on the other hand, teach the dialect of virality — optimised and templated and almost always algorithm-safe. What started as support and perhaps even good-natured altruism has become a form of vulgar standardisation. Soon, the feed reads like it was ghostwritten by the same three people — all of whom charge by the hour.

The irony is that many of these same coaches market authenticity as a product. “Be your true self,” they say — “but let me show you how.” And the moment authenticity is templated, it stops being authentic. When a story like Janney’s collapses, we clutch our pearls not because it’s shocking, but because it reminds us how much of what we consume is professionally edited reality. 

The algorithm we feed

And so the cycle continues: coached authenticity, curated messiness, sincerity engineered for scale. We like to talk about “the algorithm” like it’s something done to us. But we are the algorithm. Every time we scroll past something uncomfortable, double-tap the inspirational quote, share the safe post — we train it. And it trains us back. We’ve become our own content moderators, self-censoring before we even hit publish. We know instinctively what will land and what won’t. The post about your promotion? Yes. The one about your panic attack? Probably not. The celebration of your team’s win? Absolutely. The admission that you’re winging it half the time? Risky.

This isn’t conscious conspiracy. It’s learned behaviour. Thousands of micro-interactions — likes, comments, shares — have quietly taught us that safe content is successful content. 

Worse, we’ve started believing our own performance. The line between who we are and who we post about being has blurred. We curate not just our content but our thoughts, editing ourselves in real time to fit the version that performs. We are the algorithm. And the algorithm has made us so incredibly boring.

The impossible standards for women

Inevitably, a palpable tightening of standards happens when performance becomes second nature. And this is nowhere more deeply felt than amongst women. Women leaders on LinkedIn must appear effortlessly excellent. Assertive, but not aggressive. Thoughtful, but never tentative. Inspiring, but not indulgent. You must exude confidence — in every word, emoji, caption — or risk being seen as unfit.

Show up without polish? That’s not raw or honest. That’s unprofessional.

The algorithm doesn’t enforce this — the feedback loop does. Posts that signal control and charm perform better. Especially from women. You can’t just be a CEO. You have to be a mompreneur. You can’t just win a deal. You have to sandwich it between imposter syndrome and gratitude. Even strength must be softened.

Janney’s story fits this perfectly. Vulnerability that affirms. Emotionality that resolves into insight. A lie that, had it landed, would’ve been rewarded. And even as it unraveled, the commentary stayed focused on her. Not the culture that shaped her performance. Not the impossible expectations we place on women to be emotionally articulate and professionally brilliant at the same time. Her. 

So we shouldn’t be surprised if women hire someone to help craft their persona. We should be asking why they felt they had to. Maybe the fix isn’t asking for better performance. Maybe it’s letting go of performance altogether.

Reclaiming the full self

What I posit LinkedIn really needs today is range. Texture. Tonal shifts. Posts that are sometimes sharp, sometimes soft. Sometimes funny. Sometimes pointless. Sometimes human — and nothing else.

That includes posts that don’t resolve. That aren’t motivational. That don’t feature anyone whispering wisdom in an airport. We need incomplete, exploratory posts because that’s how people are. There is no correct emotional tone. No universal content strategy. No perfect balance of emojis and paragraphs. There’s only what’s true to you — and that changes weekly.

The problem here isn’t fakery. It’s sameness. Sameness is seductive. It’s tidy and it sure as hell gets shared. But it’s also limiting. It flattens. And in flattening, it silences the most interesting parts.

Still, this isn’t a rallying cry for authenticity. This is an argument for contradiction. For surprise. For a LinkedIn where your post about quarterly revenue sits next to your shitpost about Piyush Gupta. Where burnout doesn’t disqualify leadership. Where being human doesn’t need a copywriter.

Janney Hujic isn’t the problem. She’s a flashpoint. The real opportunity isn’t in condemning her — or doubling down on thought leadership. It’s in reclaiming space. To be contradictory and unserious. To be you — and know that’s enough.

And sure, the algorithm may not reward it. But people will remember it. Because what we crave beyond the metrics, playbooks, and pastel templates is proof that someone, somewhere, dared to show up whole in a place perfectly optimised for fragments. That in a feed of flattened selves, they held the line for nuance. 

In a world so obsessively optimised, unpredictability isn’t mere resistance — it may be the only strategy left worth remembering.