SOUTH PEMBERLEY —
A South Pemberley accounts assistant opened LinkedIn on Monday to accept a single connection request and closed it five minutes later in what he described as “a full professional identity crisis” and what his colleagues described as “overdue.”
Martin Ashworth, 38, said the trouble began when he noticed that a former classmate, who once sank a group project by “forgetting” it existed, was now a “Chief Vision Officer” at a company whose purpose could not be determined from its website, its investors or, according to its own filings, itself.
“He was humbled,” Ashworth said quietly. “He was humbled and honoured to announce something. I don’t know what. I just know he was humbled.”
“I’ve never been humbled. I’ve only ever been humble. It’s different. It pays less.”
Within the next ninety seconds, Ashworth saw a post about waking at 4am, a post about leadership lessons from a child’s lemonade stand, and a 600-word reflection that began “Today I let 400 people go, and here’s what it taught me about gratitude.”
By minute four, he had begun drafting a new headline for his own profile. By minute five, he had deleted it, closed the app and stared at a wall for what witnesses described as “a while” and HR logged as “unscheduled downtime.”
A report by the Pemberley Institute of Online Comparison found that the average user now spends 4.6 minutes on the platform before feeling behind in life, down from 7 minutes in 2019. Researchers attribute the drop to “increased humbleness per square inch” and an algorithm that has learned which users are weakest at 11pm and shows them their former colleagues’ promotions first.
“Other social networks make you feel bad about your holiday,” said lead author Dr. Carol Fenwick. “This one does your whole life, in a professional font, then sells your data to the recruiter who rejects you.”
Ashworth’s manager, Sue Kettering, said he seemed “a bit off” for the rest of the day and at one point asked whether the company had “a vision.” He was told it did, and that he was not in it.
At press time, Ashworth had received a notification congratulating him on his work anniversary. It was his ninth. Four people liked it. Two were recruiters. One was a bot. One was his mum.
This article is satire. The people, places, quotes and studies described are fictional.