Amplifying nonsense

I saw a posting today of someone trying to break into the content design field. He was shocked that after posting constantly on Twitter and LinkedIn about UX writing, that nobody had hired him yet.

My first reaction on seeing such a candidate would be to reject him immediately. If you’ve never worked a day as a UX writer, but already style yourself a social media influencer in the field, there’s little chance of you being able to learn as a junior UX writer. [Insert cliché about beginner’s mind]

The best content designers whom I know don’t post on social media about work nor do they constantly present at conferences. Talking about work ins’t the same thing as working.

This sort of fakery would have been harder to pull off before the social media era. Acquiring knowledge was costlier, and networking took a lot of effort. Not that any of that was better, rather it was simply different.

I’d wager that most popular online topics are sustained by fluff filled SEO blog posts, packed with affiliate links. This creates a self-validating echo chamber with non-experts citing each other.

This isn’t only in tech. I’ve met a self proclaimed wellness coach whose training, as far as I can tell, consists of reading blog posts and social media.

And this is all before the ChatGPT era has fully dawned. The ratio of non-sense to true expertise is going to get a lot worse.