A networking platform or playground for admirers?
Almost two months ago, Chalotte Proudman, a barrister in human rights law at the CHambers of Michael Mansfield QC lashed out at Alexander Carter-Silk for allegedly misogynist remarks on LinkedIn. Carter-Silk, being an expert in protection of copyright, design rights and trademarks at the London firm Brown Rudnick, became a subject of public scrutiny on various forums - online and off; for what would you expect from the world at large if such behaviour comes from that educated an individual!
Almost two months ago, Chalotte Proudman, a barrister in human rights law at the CHambers of Michael Mansfield QC lashed out at Alexander Carter-Silk for allegedly misogynist remarks on LinkedIn. Carter-Silk, being an expert in protection of copyright, design rights and trademarks at the London firm Brown Rudnick, became a subject of public scrutiny on various forums - online and off; for what would you expect from the world at large if such behaviour comes from that educated an individual!
Reading that, I just had one question on my mind, who does that on LinkedIn? I mean, we’re all used to being subjected to such behaviour on informal platforms like Facebook et al, and we gracefully ignore them, too. But LinkedIn is a professional platform, primarily meant for the purpose of networking in order to hire or get hired.
Another thought that later crept into my mind was, thank god! That never happened to me. As
I thought I was not really prepared to handle such crass behaviour on a platform like LinkedIn. Another,
advantage that I thought I held was that I never considered myself to fall in
the league of women who bag such admiration (I have always been thankful for
that). And as providence might have it, the events that followed got me to have
a taste of it.
On Oct 10,
2015, I received a connection request from an
employee of my previous organisation. On finding plenty of common colleagues as
his connections, I accepted the request and within moments I received a message
from this gentleman,
To receive such a message on LinkedIn was a first and given
the tone of this message, I wasn’t sure if his intent was to make a sexist
remark or it just didn’t come out right. I let the incident pass giving the
benefit of doubt to the person in question, without responding of course.
The reason why I’m writing about the incident today is
because, yesterday, Nov 4th, 2015, I received another message from a
person who had sent in a connection request a few days back. This gentleman incidentally “couldn’t hold himself,”
With such incidents to back my case, I’m sharing my
experience today while I have quietly removed them from my network. But I really
fail to understand why do people show such mannerisms at all?
With all the LinkedIn insights and profile enhancement recommendations, my profile visibility goes down if I take my profile picture off. If I do keep it intact, I will be receiving such postcards of admiration every now and then.
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