Everyone hates a troll. When you're not looking for trouble, they come and start shit. Then when you try to argue back they respond with some extremely homophobic, racist, and totally irrelevant insult (e.g., "well at least I don't like to take it up the ass like you -- faggot!"). But trolls display, albeit at an extreme, an integral mechanism of a community: flaming. Flaming keeps people in line. It enforces norms. And one place I think there should be some better norms is the LinkedIn community.
I know, the little fascist in me is coming out, but since meeting the BU alum at work, I want to connect with the BU alumni community. So I scrolled down on my LinkedIn homepage to actually see what was being said on the BU group, hoping to find perhaps some NYC BU Alum event for me to attend. And what I see is this comment in response to the question "Do you know of any notable BU technology start-up founders?"
Matthew B. Smith is Managing Director, Investments at Connecticut Innovations, Inc. (Rocky Hill, CT), a venture capital firm, and serves on the Board of Directors of several CI portfolio firms. Mr. Smith has a multifaceted range of healthcare experiences marked by leading edge business developments.
His experiences include co-authoring the first federally funded HMO feasibility study and corporate healthcare ventures with GTE New Ventures Corporation as well as other major medical firms, such as Technicon Corporation, American Hospital Supply Corporation and National Patent Development Corporation, where he rose to be the president of the Acme-Chaston subsidiary.
Mr. Smith co-founded CompreMedx Cancer Centers Corporation (the first publicly traded firm to build freestanding cancer centers in partnership with oncologists and radiologists), co-owned Kramex Corporation (a privately owned portable and mobile radiology manufacturing and distribution firm),...[this continues on for a long time]
Legitimately, that was all he wrote. Okay, I get it; you want to promote yourself on LinkedIn. But to not even try to give an honest answer to the question and on top of that, shamelessly promote yourself in the third-person?!
Matt Smith needs to get flamed -- like YouTube comment style flame.
Of course, there are no trolls on LinkedIn (though tons of shameless self-promoters / spammers) largely just because people have to be "professional" and you never know who might see you acting like a jackass. There's no cloak of anonymity, or population of 13 year old boys to spur flaming or troll behavior. While I would love to flame the guy, I know it wouldn't reflect well on me. Instead, I clicked the "Flag as inappropriate" button (totally unsatisfying).
Everyone hates a troll, but when I'm on LinkedIn, free of any flaming and full of unchecked spammers, I sort of miss the immature, offensive, assholes of the internet.
Here's an alternative solution: Why don't you just civilly tell him there's no need to refer to himself in the third-person and that there are better ways to promote himself.
ReplyDeleteIt's not as satisfying as a good ol' flame. I really wonder though, for some guy who purports to be so accomplished, why is he on LinkedIn promoting himself??
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