Ask HN: Why are so many "AI evangelists" posting such insufferable content?

17 points by seattle_spring 3 hours ago | 16 comments

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.

maxrev17 2 hours ago |

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!

jw-open 41 minutes ago |

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?

witos2 3 hours ago |

LinkedIn posters are 90% people who could be hit by a bus and leave the world a better place afterwards.

dinkleberg 1 hour ago | |

It is a true hellscape. It is useful when looking for work, but that is about it. Though it isn't without comedy. Seeing former co-workers posting about their keys for success and about how they've made it when you know damned well that they do worse than mediocre work is always a laugh.

xg15 1 hour ago |

Who unironically writes "thought leader" as their job description?

seattle_spring 40 minutes ago | |

I just went to check-- I have 6 first-degree connections with the phrase "thought leader" in their title. This out of about 800 connections, all of which are people I've met in-person. Some real-world examples:

* "Independent Thought Leader and Consultant"

* "Strategy, Innovation, and Distruptive Technology thought leader in the Hyperscale/Cloud business"

* "AI Thought Leader + Founder at <company name>.ai"

* "C++ expert and agile process thought leader"

When expanded to 2nd degree connections, I get more than 10 pages of results when searching for the phrase "Thought Leader" (in quotes, so it's not a fuzzy search phrase).

mrdependable 1 hour ago |

I think of LinkedIn like walking into a Tony Robbins event. At least, what I imagine they are like from those old infomercials.

add-sub-mul-div 1 hour ago |

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.

jdlshore 35 minutes ago | |

I think it’s more that they can’t recognize the downsides of AI. They work with AI and it’s so smart! And magical! They don’t have the expertise to recognize the problems in its output, and they’re confused by complaints. It looks like stubborn resistance to them, so they turn to evangelism to try to get people to “see the light.” They don’t engage with legitimate criticism because they don’t understand it.

(That and the normal herd of grifters who pile on to every fad.)

sloaken 1 hour ago |

Those that can, Do.

Enough said.

playorizaya 2 hours ago |

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.

CM30 2 hours ago |

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.

Qision 3 hours ago |

> My LinkedIn feed

Do you seriously use that?

snicky 3 hours ago | |

Not OP and I don't, but I know a few people who are very active on LI with their daily self-promotion posts only barely disguised as thoughtful remarks about the industry and this seems to be helping them to get into upper mgmt roles in companies most of us know here. It feels true even for people who weren't doing particularly great when I worked with them to put it politely.

srbsa 3 hours ago |

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?

bitbasher 1 hour ago |

To be fair, Theo Browne was insufferable even before the AI content.