Picture the ego meter starting at a humble 3: a mid-level manager posts about synergy and gets three likes from their aunt. Normal. Contained. Barely delusional.
At level 6 the celebrities arrive and suddenly every thread is a TED Talk disguised as a promotion. The platform stops asking what you do and starts asking how loudly you can announce you do it.
By level 9 the influencers treat LinkedIn itself as the full-time role. Posting about "hustle" becomes the hustle. The career-focused original purpose dissolves into a loop where visibility is the product and the product is more visibility.
At level 12 someone announces they "built in public" by tweeting screenshots of their own growth metrics. The meter cracks. The delusion is no longer personal; it's infrastructure.
The final reading doesn't come from any one post. It comes from realizing the most engaged users now earn more from the act of being on the platform than from anything the platform was originally designed to facilitate.
