Viral LinkedIn Post Warns: Let an LLM Write for You and Your Intellectual Fly Is Open

A post titled “Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post” is getting attention online. The piece, first shared as a LinkedIn post on November 11, 2025, argues that people writing on LinkedIn with AI are not fooling anyone.

LinkedIn as Gerald Ford

The author opens with a comparison, calling LinkedIn “the Gerald Ford of social networks.”

The author explains further: while the Nixons and the Spiro Agnews of social media fell apart, LinkedIn was the one left standing. Like Gerald Ford after Watergate, the author says, LinkedIn offers something plain and a little dull, but at least not false. That, the post says, is a relief.

The Problem With LLM Writing

The author’s main complaint is about how people write on the platform now. LinkedIn itself, the post notes, actively offers to write posts for you using AI, making it easy for people to hand their writing over to a machine.

The result, the author says, is bad. The writing is full of emojis, short paragraphs cut into single lines, repeated phrasing such as “it’s not just… but also,” and dashes that some writers use with skill but most do not.

The post argues that LLM-generated writing is easy to spot for anyone who has read much of it, since more and more people now recognize it on sight. The consequence, in the author’s words:

your intellectual fly is open: lots of people notice—but no one is pointing it out.

What Gets Lost

The author says the trouble goes past style. When someone’s posts are plainly written by an LLM, the author writes, it becomes hard to tell what is real from what has simply been invented by a machine.

That doubt affects whether people keep reading. As the author puts it, “I stop reading—and so do lots of others.”

The post does not reject the technology entirely. LLMs, the author writes, are useful for working through ideas, for understanding text, and as editors — with one advantage over human editors: a person can set aside their suggestions freely, without starting an argument over small points of style.

Not You, Not the Point

The author draws a firm line between what LLMs are good for and who should be doing the writing. LLMs, the post argues, are poor writers, and above all, they are not you.

The stakes, as the author lays them out, come in two parts. At best, writing produced this way causes readers to pass over it or stop reading. At worst, readers who spot the machine behind it start to doubt whether the person posting is being honest with them at all.

The author’s closing appeal is direct: people should have confidence in their own voice and write their own content, “if not for the sanity of all of us than just to give your own message the credit it deserves.”

Source: bcantrill.dtrace.org

AI content · authenticity · LinkedIn · LLM writing · social media