What is success and what is failure on LinkedIn? In business? In life?

When I was at PwC, the practice I was in won a £139m project — and it was the beginning of the end for us.

https://www.celebrity-cutouts.co.uk/shop/celebrity-mask/uncategorised-celebrity-mask/bob-dylan-brown-hair-celebrity-mask/

I got up early to write this, as usual, and cradled my coffee as I pored over my writing prompts.

What would be a suitable follow-up to Monday’s very successful post on ‘the problem of classification and nebulosity’?

Will today’s post be a relative flop, like the one (that was very important to me) on ‘meta-rationality’? Or a stonking success, like my recent one on the APPortunity conference?

I was easy bait to be nerdsniped, distracted, and blown off course by an intriguing tweet from Venkatesh Rao, talking about his ‘failure’ to bring the art of twitter shitposting to LinkedIn.

https://xkcd.com/356/

“Little did I know LinkedIn earnestposting is secretly the epitome of of pure shitposting”, he said.

https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1529287516838187008

And though it’s possible the LinkedIn algorithm will crush this post for use of a naughty word, shitposting is actually something really interesting. It’s earnestness wearing a mask, it’s getting in under the radar with truly subversive thinking.

So, four quotations from music/poetry which are truly subversive are below. Each from a piece of work which is worthy of listening to in full!

Is it a success to make billions and destroy the planet?

“We need more masks” — Bob Dylan “You only tell the truth when you’re wearing a mask” Dylan, photographed in his Rolling Thunder Revue face paint, Netflix

Is it a failure to be sincere in a world that sneers at anything but irony?

https://pixels.com/featured/bob-dylan-2-tony-rubino.html?product=face-mask

Are you a failure or a success? Are you sure?

I’ve heard you say many times

That you’re better than no one

And no one is better than you

If you really believe that

You know you have

Nothing to win and nothing to lose

To Ramona, Bob Dylan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQNyqIZccbg though actually the Alan Price version is the best IMO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHgeI9XpIPY

practice, practice makes perfect

Perfect is a fault, in fault lies change

I Believe, R.E.M.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aopES6KCBQs / https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/122485/

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If, by Rudyard Kipling (‘Brother Square-Toes’ — Rewards and Fairies)

www.flickr.com/photos/brewbooks/177411181 / www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

(CC BY-SA 2.0)

In the dime stores and bus stations

People talk of situations

Read books, repeat quotations

Draw conclusions on the wall

Some speak of the future

My love she speaks softly

She knows there’s no success like failure

And that failure’s no success at all

Love Minus Zero/No Limit — Bob Dylan

https://www.craftdeology.com/the-story-of-the-chinese-farmer-by-alan-watts/