The Best Of LinkedIn Instagram account has been sharing hilarious posts from the networking site since 2018, and it has amassed over 41k followers by doing so. But this isn’t the only platform Best Of LinkedIn has succeeded on. As any LinkedInfluencer would tell you, it’s important to have a diverse portfolio, so the creator, JR Hickey, also runs a popular X account with over 40k followers.
We’re such big fans of JR’s work here at Bored Panda that this is the third time we've featured his accounts. And lucky for us, we’ve been able to get in touch with him in the past to hear more about the background of Best Of LinkedIn.
"Back in 2018, I was an Account Executive for a SaaS company in San Francisco,” JR previously shared. “I had a boss who was a dinosaur—his idea of a good follow-up to a meeting was mailing laminated copies of the deck we presented to the prospect after the fact. The phrase, 'Stop by Kinko's' was uttered a few times in my short tenure there (Kinko's was dropped by FedEx in 2008, ten years prior)."
The creator went on to share that a significant part of his job at the time was cold calling through LinkedIn. "I was already dissatisfied with my role, my career, and the company, so spending a few hours a day on LinkedIn just about pushed me over the edge," he noted.
"I began seeing the first inklings of these so-called 'LinkedInfluencers' and started screenshotting their posts and sharing them on my personal Twitter account,” JR continued. “Once those gained traction, I decided to create a dedicated [X] account for it, and thus, @BestOfLinkedin was born."
As far as what JR thinks of the culture on LinkedIn, he previously told Bored Panda that he wouldn’t necessarily call it “toxic,” but “downright demented” might be more accurate. “It's just a giant back-patting circle/echo chamber where people aren't even telling a version of the truth anymore," he shared.
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According to JR, LinkedIn is full of “unoriginal sellouts who regurgitate corporate buzzwords and stories of incredible business acumen in an effort to game the algorithm and try to hide the fact that there isn't a single thing that's interesting about them.”
“And nobody will call them out, for fear of losing their job or it blowing back on them professionally,” he added. “The entire platform lacks accountability, which is insane because its intention initially was to be just that.”
But JR doesn’t hate everything about LinkedIn. He noted that it can be a “terrific place to read business news, as well as to find jobs, recruit talent, and network with people in your industry.”
"It's a valuable business development tool, but sadly it's been watered down by these self-proclaimed 'LinkedInfluencers' and their BS success stories,” the creator previously told Bored Panda. “LinkedIn could improve the user experience drastically by focusing on moderating these posts and suppressing them when they don't offer anything valuable.”
