Your intellectual fly is open (2025)
Your Intellectual Fly is Open (2025)
Originally shared via LinkedIn on November 11, 2025; republished here on December 5, 2025.
I have a confession that is somewhat difficult to admit: LinkedIn has actually become a significant part of my social media ecosystem.
To be clear, this isn't because the platform is a masterpiece of design or functionality. Rather, LinkedIn is the Gerald Ford of the social media world. It is the unremarkable, steady presence that remained standing while the "Richard Nixons" and "Spiro Agnews" of the industry collapsed in a heap of scandal and dysfunction.
Like Ford, LinkedIn is a bit clunky and decidedly dull, but in a post-Watergate digital landscape, there is a certain comfort in knowing that it isn't completely corrupt crooked.
The Problem: The LLM Epidemic
However, since I'm spending more time in this space, we need to address a glaring issue: too many of you are letting Large Language Models (LLMs) ghostwrite your content.
This isn't entirely your fault. The temptation is baked into the platform; LinkedIn practically begs you to rewrite it with AI, offering its assistance with an almost aggressive level of enthusiasm. It seems so helpful to lighten your workload—so why not just let the machine take the wheel?
The "AI Smell"
The issue isn't just that the output is mediocre; it's that the style is physically grating. AI-generated text is plagued by specific, recognizable patterns:
- An over-reliance on 🚀 emojis.
- The "one-sentence-per-paragraph" rhythm.
- The repetitive
"It's not just X... but also Y"sentence structure. - The excessive use of em-dashes—which some people use naturally, but most AI uses as a crutch.
The Bottom Line: When you use an LLM to write your posts, you think you're producing "professional" prose. In reality, to anyone who has encountered even a small amount of AI content, the "tells" are screamingly obvious.
Bluntly put: your intellectual fly is open. Everyone sees it, but nobody has the heart (or the desire) to tell you.
The Erosion of Trust
This isn't just about a lack of style or a bit of social embarrassment. It's a fundamental problem of authenticity.
When I see a post from someone whose unique perspective I actually value, but that post is clearly written by a bot, I run into a dilemma: What part of this is real, and what part is just generated fan-fiction?
If you don't sound like yourself, I start to question if the actual ideas are yours. We can represent this loss of trust with a simple equation:
As the denominator (AI markers) increases, the perceived authenticity of the author approaches zero.
LLM Utility vs. LLM Authorship
To be fair, I believe LLMs are incredibly powerful tools. We should distinguish between using them and being replaced by them.
| Use Case | LLM Performance | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Brainstorming | Excellent | ✅ Use it |
| Text Comprehension | Invaluable | ✅ Use it |
| Editing/Polishing | Astonishing | ✅ Use it |
| Original Authoring | Lousy | ❌ Avoid it |
One major perk of using an AI as an editor is that, unlike a human editor, you can ignore its suggestions without starting a war over the .
The Risk Cycle
If you continue to outsource your voice, you enter a dangerous loop:
Final Advice
At best, an LLM will wrap your genuine insights in a stylistic package that encourages people to skim or stop reading entirely. At worst, it makes your audience question whether you are an authentic person or just a prompt-engineer.
For the sake of our collective sanity—and to ensure your ideas actually get the credit they deserve—please follow this checklist:
- Trust your own voice.
- Write your own content.
- Avoid the "AI rewrite" button.
- Embrace the occasional imperfection.
Stop letting the machine speak for you. Just write it yourself.