Profiled

This weekend, I’m doing a book event called dReadCon, so here’s a throwback for you!

A few days ago, I saw a red flag hovering above the LinkedIn app on my phone. “Ooh,” I thought. “Is someone interested in being my friend?” Now, I know that connections on LinkedIn aren’t technically called ‘friends’, but what exactly DO you call them? ‘Business peeps’? ‘Corporate posse’? ‘Kudo Klub’? (If you know anything about LinkedIn, you know it’s always pressuring you to send kudos to people as if the mere fact that you’ve been connected to them for five years is cause for celebration, like ‘You’ve never once LIKED MY POSTS, MARCIA, so kudos for that.’ (I spend most of my time on LinkedIn wishing people happy birthday or congratulating them on their work anniversaries with lovely, personalized, auto-generated kudos.) At any rate, when I opened the app, I was even more excited to see that it was a personal message.

So I clicked on the message icon in breathless anticipation. There was a message from ‘Jarod’. It read, “Hi Suzanne! I wanted to reach out because, based on your profile, I thought you might be interested in discussing your sports flooring needs. Please reach out to me anytime!” Now, there were several questions I had about this message:

1) Who the hell is Jarod?

2) What’s with all the exclamation marks? This is LinkedIn, not Twitter/X.

3) What in the name of all that is holy could possibly have led Jarod to read my profile and glean from it that I had ‘sports flooring needs?

4) What even IS sports flooring?

And because I had no interest in engaging with Jarod about his weird flooring fetish, I will answer these questions myself:

1) I have no damned idea. He is neither a Business Peep nor a member of my Corporate Posse.

2) Jarod is very excited about sports flooring and the idea of potentially connecting with me over it. Perhaps he envisions us, sipping wine on a terrace somewhere, enthusiastically discussing whatever the heck sports flooring is.

3) I re-examined my profile. It says my name and that I’m the author of several books and that I’m the editor of DarkWinter Press and Literary Magazine. It also says I’ve been endorsed for Public Speaking and Educational Leadership despite the fact that the only thing I ever post on LinkedIn is my blog. Where, in ANY of that, is there the slightest indication that I’m a) athletic b) interested in sports c) interested in floors? I looked further down and realized that someone had endorsed me for ‘Coaching’. Could that be the tenuous link?

4) The only thing I can even think of is astroturf. Why would I ever in a million years need astroturf? I HAVE GRASS, JAROD. Or is sports flooring that bouncy stuff? Because that MIGHT be cool, maybe in like one room where you could go when you were stressed and just bounce around on your sports flooring like Tigger until you felt better. Then it occurred to me—could ‘sports flooring’ be a euphemism? But I couldn’t for the life of me think what it might be a euphemism for, so I asked Ken:

Me: What could an interest in sports flooring be a euphemism for? Like, you’re a professional killer and you bury someone under concrete at an arena?
Ken: That’s very dark. Hmm. The only euphemism about sports I’ve ever heard is ‘Water Sports’.
Me: Water sports? Like water polo?
Ken: No, like…you know, ‘Golden Showers’.
Me: EWWWWWW.

So I immediately wrote back to Jarod: I DON’T DO THAT. What a creep. Then I looked and realized I had two other messages, one from ‘Matt’, who wanted to know if I was interested in an AI Training Pilot Project. Now, if that’s a euphemism for teaching my robot butler how to bring me wine, count me in. The other was from someone who thinks I like camping. I don’t. And the best way to get me to LIKE camping is definitely not to send me a metal cylinder FULL OF FIRE. So guess which message I’ll be responding to based on my profile?

25 thoughts on “Profiled”

  1. Why would you need a basketball court floor? Sometime I just don’t get LinkedIn, what is the purpose of you get spammed all the time? I thought it was to help people connect for business, but apparently it’s to sell people wooden floors for high school or college sports.

    I log into my LinkedIn account so infrequently that I forget I have it, lol. But I do get those type of offers/messages. It’s annoying because I once got a message that offered me an interview for an oil rig worker. I’m like…..mmmmm I could do that. With my background in higher education/contracts and grants work, sure I could work on an off shore oil rig platform off the coast of Mexico. Not taking into account my thalassophobia and not to mention Jaws, Jaws is out there. By the way those Solo fire pit stoves are awesome! My son bought one and during the winter we use it a lot when we go over.

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  5. First, I’m greatly amused that Ken could come up with an actual euphemism off the top of his head. And maybe a little concerned. I’m also annoyed with LinkedIn at the moment—it irks me slightly when pointless stuff pops up and the rest of the time I forget it even exists. But I found some guy’s insurance card in a parking lot. The only way to contact him I could find was his LinkedIn profile. He’s on LinkedIn, I’m on LinkedIn, should be no problem, right? No, LinkedIn wanted me to pay for “premium” before I could message him. I sent a connect request. Maybe then I can talk to him but by that time he might have a new card.

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  7. dReadCon? That sounds more like a euphemism. Convict remedial reading program?
    LinkedIn, the wannabe social platform that Microsoft refuses to admit was a mistake buying.
    You mean you hide your true identity as an international spy? PlayerOne? Maybe that was your callsign. Nobody’d believe you.
    Turkish contact: “if you’re a spy for your Canadian government, what is your handle?”
    You, with an air of whimsy, “PlayerOne.”
    “Ha! That funny one. Like game yes?”
    “What do you mean?”
    Hmm, I think, how you say, ‘pulling my leg’.”
    You: “Tell me about that shipment of antique clocks…”

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  10. General Petraeus wanted to be my friend on Google Circles, or whatever it was called, years ago. But that’s the most interesting invitation I’ve ever gotten. Except for the FB ads that want me to be cremated. Sports flooring–ya got me.

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