Ask HN: Why are so many "AI evangelists" posting such insufferable content?
My LinkedIn feed is absolutely unreal right now. 90% (I don't even think I'm exaggerating) of the posts in my feed are from connections who have changed their title to something like "AI Thought Leader | AI Native | Thought Coaching". They post *daily* about something LLM/agentic. The biggest problem is that it's never "hey check out this cool thing", it's "if you're not doing this, you're a dinosaur who will be left in the past." Other common content is regurgitating blog / Twitter folks from "AI influencers", associated with statements like, "Boris McAI said software engineering is dead. Here's 5 reasons why he's right." I felt this way a bit when cryptocurrency was at its height, but it never got this embarrassing or self-fellating. How do so many of my connections (more than 800 at this point) have literally zero shame? Hell it's not even first-degree connections.
Discussion Highlights (15 comments)
Qision
> My LinkedIn feed Do you seriously use that?
srbsa
Don't you remember the time that people were solving the 'Strait of Hormuz' crisis on LinkedIn with lines drawn on maps and showing their 'problem-solving' skills? ... or was it just my feed?
playorizaya
LinkedIn was always sooo fake and bad as in it was a living nightmare dystopia some of the shit people would write. I often wondered: Is this how you get promotions? No way does that actually work or do anything... And then I'm like holy shit is it genuine??? Is this really coming from the heart and I'm the cold, dead, psychopath who can't appreciate a genuinely thoughtful update from a corporate peer? I had to get out of there. I'm not on LinkedIn anymore... but I imagine it's even worse now that all the b2b saas posters have gone full agentic. You never go full agentic.
maxrev17
No one provides any value in their posts. I want to try to generate leads for my business and I’m told to use LinkedIn. I’m trying to provide some value - useful things such as how to configure home assistant to see if kids devices were pulling data in the night (when they should have been asleep), etc. it’s not exactly getting the back patting as ‘trillion dollar markets’ musings or soc2 congratulations… but if one person benefits I’ll be happy . But yes that does mean I’m a LinkedIn wanker… can’t beat em, join em!
CM30
LinkedIn doesn't really reward meaningful content. People there are just looking for meaningless business related platitudes at the expense of all else. Well, that and based on my experience, most AI 'evangelists' tend to be pretty bad at coming up with creative ideas in general. Many of them are basically the same grifters that tried to cash in on crypto and NFTs, except with a new fad of choice.
mrdependable
I think of LinkedIn like walking into a Tony Robbins event. At least, what I imagine they are like from those old infomercials.
sloaken
Those that can, Do. Enough said.
add-sub-mul-div
Maybe it's the mediocre people who are most excited about AI because they see it as equalizing them with more interesting and original people.
xg15
Who unironically writes "thought leader" as their job description?
jw-open
The term of AI is definitely overused on the internet especially on social media platforms. One possible reason might be related to marketing. The fundamental behind AI is the same thing behind traditional software systems. So for the “AI evangelists” — the needs to be recognized is much stronger than the needs to be a great software engineer. I am using a metaphor, do you want to play soccer in the playground? Or do you want to be a great fan of soccer? Have you seen soccer evangelists to be great soccer players?
icedchai
I see the same thing. The majority of their posts are, of course, AI-generated and incredibly verbose.
nitwit005
They probably just set up some AI tool to make posts automatically. A quick search shows things like this: https://apaya.com/lp/linkedin
throwaway81523
It's bot spam all the way down.
stAInley
You missed the AI generated graphic to go with the post.
jryan49
Then why are you reading LinkedIn...