Maybe it takes the perspective of being away for a few days... or maybe just the clarity that comes with getting high on the fumes of coconut-scented SPF 100.

But LinkedIn has a growing problem.

Specifically, the people selling "courses" here on how to master LinkedIn... or how to "dominate your niche."

Or people who post their "AI prompt hack tips," for that matter.

Or people offering to get me 50 new leads this month for my consulting business.

Or people who can boost SEO performance for our website.

Or people who will get me discoverable in LLM (AI search) queries.

Or people who want me to pay for "Premium growth solutions" buried three paragraphs into a newsletter I never asked for.

My problem isn't the hustle game... it's the underlying assumption behind all of it: That attention is the goal.

It's not. Attention is easy. It can be bought. It can be gamed. It can be manufactured by an algorithm that doesn't know the difference between something true and something engineered to make you stop scrolling.

When attention becomes the only north star, you get a feed full of people arbitraging confusion. Fake scarcity. Automated DMs. Screenshots of ChatGPT dressed up as expertise.

Real expertise shows up in how you think, not how you've automated DM messages to spam me.

CONTEXT matters. CRAFT matters. And so does the environment where your ideas actually live... one you own and CONTROL, not one where the algorithm decides whether your best thinking ever surfaces.

And unless you're a professional journalist or an established writer, I'm HIGHLY skeptical of any and all work that exists behind a paywall.

If your free work teaches nothing, I'm out.

And if your entire business model is selling shortcuts to a system that's already broken, you might want to rethink the product.