The Graduate and the LinkedIn Newspeak
Still from the Graduate (1967) directed by Mike Nichols.
Note: This was originally posted as a LinkedIn article (December 11 2024).
Am I ‘happy to announce’ this professional achievement, or am I ‘delighted’ to do so? Does it ‘bring me great pleasure’ to share this news, or does it excite me? Should I tell my network ‘what a journey it has been!’, or should I say that ‘this marks the beginning of a new chapter’? Am I thrilled? Exalted? Proud? Honored?
If you’re having a hard time answering these questions for yourself, you’re not alone. Every day on LinkedIn, thousands of white-collar professionals suffer in silence from these paralyzing choices.
I happen to have had a research paper recently published, which is an accolade of good standing in the universe of LinkedIn announcements: not as prestigious as a new job or promotion, but more prestigious than completing a MOOC. At any rate, it’s an achievement worthy of a post with a few rocket emojis. But the question remains: with which entry of the LinkedIn phrasal lexicon should I begin my post? In other words, how do I really feel about this achievement?
I thought about this very carefully, and I’ve reached a conclusion as to which phrase is best, not just for my own post, but in my opinion for most posts that announce achievements. But first, let me tell you about a film.
The Graduate (1967) tells the story of Benjamin, an awkward twenty-one-year-old that gets seduced by Mrs. Robinson, an older woman and friend of his parents. They enter into a short-lived affair that ends when he becomes disappointed with the affair’s solely physical nature. Soon after, a chain of events brings him closer to his seductress’s daughter, Elaine, and they fall in love. For obvious reasons, Mrs. Robinson disapproves of their relationship and tries to keep them apart.
In Act III, Benjamin learns that Elaine, under pressure from her parents, is about to marry another man. He decides to storm the church where the ceremony is taking place and manages in the nick of time to rescue her from the altar. The young lovers flee the church in dramatic fashion, leaving the wedding guests in shock.
The final and now deservedly famous scene shows Elaine and Benjamin boarding a bus to complete their escape. They’re laughing and breathing heavily, elated and in awe of what they’ve done. The bus passengers are staring at them—she’s still in her wedding dress and he’s disheveled from having just scuffled with her father.
What happens next is interesting. A medium close-up of the couple shows their expressions and postures slowly changing. Without either of them speaking, their jubilant faces turn somber, shift back to jubilation, then settle into looks of doubt and confusion. Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” begins to play as the screen fades to black, marking the film’s end.
The shifting of emotions that the actors portray isn’t subtle, but it happens so quickly that a small distraction or lapse of focus might cause you to miss it. Once you’ve seen it, however, it becomes clear that it’s crucial to the scene’s meaning and possibly to the whole film’s integrity. Because it’s an accurate reflection of earlier events in the film and its overall tone— a point I’ll return to later. This change of affect suggests that the characters are doubting the seriousness of their love, feeling guilty for what they’ve done to their families, or dreading the uncertainties of their future. Their rebellious adventure has left them emotionally confused and morally wounded.
Those few seconds (about 20) showcase film’s ability to capture aspects of the human experience that are as common and relatable as they are difficult to articulate, lying in a level of consciousness that for most people eludes the intellect. Effective storytelling, exemplified here by the puissant acting, pierces through the viewer’s intellect, allowing them to feel through projection rather than think. It gives them emotional and experiential references that can, in a way, anchor their very being.
You could try to put into words the specifically vague feeling that that scene in The Graduate captures so well: that void-inducing depression that follows a presumed success, the niggling type of ‘now what?’ that leaves you wanting more, but at the same time, lethargically wanting nothing at all— like ever. You could scream into a pillow the humiliating frustration of discovering that the peak you’ve just about broken your back scaling is someone else’s valley, that your grail is the loose change they wouldn’t so much as risk creasing their pants bending down to pick up. You could say this and hope that someone nods in agreement. But if your aim was simply to express that feeling, to depict it, then I doubt you could do that with the kind of fidelity that a pair of well-directed actors could, and certainly not in mere seconds and using only your facial muscles.
And so it was that upon receiving news of our paper’s acceptance for publication, I felt an unsettling ambiguity of emotions— a distress that was relieved considerably as soon as I recalled (and later rewatched) The Graduate. Like the characters in its finale, I was disillusioned with my supposed achievement. Their changing facial expressions spoke for my angst and gave me the validation I needed. And with that relief and validation came the clarity to think about the pressing question: how do I announce this on LinkedIn? Having established that I wasn’t happy, thrilled, proud, nor honored to receive the news, then I couldn’t be happy, thrilled, proud, nor honored ‘to announce it’.
If anything, I was conflicted; and while ‘I’m conflicted to announce’ has a nice ring to it, on LinkedIn it risks coming across as a forced neologism—ugly and meaningless. To find a better alternative, I had to think of the root causes of my conflicting feelings.
Incidentally, I discovered that I might not have been the only one feeling this way. Two days after receiving the news about the paper, I met two of its coauthors to have some cake in celebration. I can’t read minds, but to the extent that I could read the room, I sensed that they might have felt something similar. Very few words were exchanged beyond the bare minimum pleasantries, so this is pure speculation on my part. But something in the air felt off. The mood was retrospective rather than festive, and we all ate our cake with a tacit sense of regret. It was an even more Graduate-esque moment than what I had experienced internally.
What could prevent the authors of a scientific paper from feeling ecstatic about it?
Could it be that collaborative research and the intoxicating camaraderie it creates are only fleeting rifts in the otherwise highly individual environment of academia, and that once a collaboration ends—with whatever modicum of success—everyone must return to their solipsistic professional concerns?
We weren’t celebrating the paper. We were in the collaboration’s wake, mourning its end.
Could it be that they’re tired? Not least because their modest success came after so many setbacks that they can’t help but still feel defeated? That their interim failures had left a bad taste in their mouths that the eventual success couldn’t magically wash down? That after such a long gruelling project, they’re only reservedly cheerful, and not cartwheel across the room euphoric, for the same reason that no one takes a victory lap after a marathon?
Could it be that this—our affectless cake consumption, which made the lunchroom we were in rather purgatorial—is in fact a sign of something good? Something virtuous? Is it not a recognition that research is a thankless job and that it should remain so? That researchers shouldn’t expect press releases and lifetime achievement awards after every other paper? That research achievements should not serve to aggrandize individuals but rather stand as testaments to society’s trust and investment in those individuals and the institutions they represent? That even one’s best efforts in research should only humble them, revealing how ignorant they’ve been and how much more remains to be done?
On these principles, it seems that not being particularly happy about (or ‘happy to announce’) a paper is actually quite normal. In a way, even that cake eating—which to an outsider might have looked like a communal last meal for condemned prisoners—was a needless decadence.
There is a much greater and more oppressive pressure to be ‘happy to announce the achievement’—that is, to take on the role of a marketer or PR specialist—than there is to feel happy about the achievement itself. Happiness about the achievement is complex and personal. ‘Happy to announce it’ is not. This is where the problem lies.
Can’t people just post that they’re ‘happy to announce X achievement’ despite not being truly happy? Is it really that big of a deal? In a way, yes. It’s an ontological affront to the very concept of happiness. If you’re happy to announce the type of things commonly shared on LinkedIn, then I find it hard to believe you’re capable of being happy at all.
The subtext of ‘I’m happy to announce’ is to gloat. It’s a stultifying, in-your-face expression of ‘I’m better than you.’ If any kind of happiness is morbidly illusory and short-lived, it’s this. Today, I published a paper, you did not. Tomorrow you receive a grant, and I don’t. Next week, I get promoted, you get laid off. It’s a rat race to a joyless pit.
Proponents of these posts could argue that a phrase like ‘happy to announce’ is simply a declaration of the achievement, a factual statement. It’s an entry into an online resume aimed at maintaining one’s professional visibility and relevance.
Why not just state the hard facts then? Why conflate facts with emotions in a way that harms both?
I recognize the irony here. I anticipate the retort that it’s in fact me, and not the ‘happy to announce’ LinkedIn user, who is a joyless Grinch. Am I so juvenile and narrow-minded that I don’t understand that when someone posts that they’re ‘happy to announce’ on LinkedIn, they don’t intend to imply their attainment of Nirvanic happiness and the cessation of all their suffering? Am I too ignorant to know that a community can create its own linguistic conventions whereby certain phrases are not to be taken at face value? That that’s part of how language works? Am I literally this stupid?
Maybe.
Or maybe I’m genuinely concerned about the proliferation of LinkedIn announcements prefaced with platitudinous faux-emotions, and what this proliferation implies. In the appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell explains that Newspeak, the language of the totalitarian dystopia he imagined, was “designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum”. Similarly, if we submit to the sovereignty of LinkedIn, and limit the expression of our professional achievements or failures to a short list of clichés and emojis, we risk losing the ability to truly express how we feel about our work- an ability whose value cannot be overstated.
The real tragedy here is that people who express themselves primarily through these LinkedIn clichés are very complex people. They’re hyperactive on LinkedIn because they’ve got something to prove. They don’t acquiesce to these virtual platitudes because they themselves (or their achievements) are platitudinous. Far from it. But they operate under a system that wants to reduce even their best work—and the complicated feelings that come with such work—into a limited set of phrases and symbols.
On a personal note, and to return to The Graduate, my reason for not being ‘happy to announce’ the publication of our paper is similar, I presume, to the reason why Mike Nichols directed Dustin Hoffman (Benjamin) and Katharine Ross (Elaine) to change their facial expressions in the film’s final seconds.
Had the film ended just twenty seconds sooner, it would have had a ‘happy ending’ where the young couple’s love triumphs over the shackles of their families’ orthodoxies. It would have been relatively believable and easy on the senses for most audiences: good and love prevail over evil.
But that’s not what the film was about. The film was, at its core, about disillusionment. Benjamin comes back to his suburban upper middle class hometown after graduation and finds himself disillusioned with the life he’s expected to lead. He then becomes equally disillusioned with the comforts of his carnal affair with Mrs. Robinson. To end the film with him resolving all his disillusionment with an impulsive and inchoate romance would have been a disservice to the character.
With a cinematic sleight of hand, Nichols assures his audience that Benjamin is still very much disillusioned. Not doing so would have bastardized the whole film’s ethos.
Similarly, I’m not ‘happy to announce’ the publication of our paper because that phrase makes a mockery of the complexity of emotions one goes through during and after such a long and difficult project.
In the folktale The Emperor’s New Clothes, the emperor’s vanity is punished by conniving tailors who sell him garments they allege are visible only to the wise and competent. In reality, they sell him nothing at all. The emperor, believing himself to be very wise and competent, pretends to see the clothes. His staff and the townsfolk perpetuate this pretense because no one wants to be seen as inept or incompetent. Finally, a child, immune to the mass delusion of adults, points at the naked emperor and laughs, bringing the charade to an end.
It feels like LinkedIn is an imperial nudist colony, where we’re all emperors. We’ve been pretending to be dressed for so long that we’ve forgotten that we are in fact naked. Occasionally, you catch a glimpse of another emperor’s nakedness—clear as day—and wonder if it’s a reflection of your own. But you’re afraid to say anything. Unlike the town in the folktale, LinkedIn has no children. The age limit for creating an account is 16 years.
With that being said, I’m happy to the announce the publication of our paper “Automated analysis of ultrastructure through large-scale hyperspectral electron microscopy” in npj Imaging.
N.B. Views and opinions in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of my coauthors in the aforementioned paper. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the my imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, including the name resemblance of The Graduate's Benjamin and one of the paper’s coauthors, is entirely coinkydinkal.