Note: I nolonger believe that LinkedIn should be a refuge from political news, as I said in the post the following week.

My office in the Dynatrace Vienna Tower shares space with various companies and organizations, including the embassies of Norway, Australia, and New Zealand. Today, these three embassies organized a brief moment of silence outside our building to honor those who have suffered and lost their lives as a result of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. I took the elevator downstairs, stepped outside, and joined everyone in that quiet reflection.

The moment of silence felt good after a few nights of doom-scrolling on my phone. Like many, I go through phases of being consumed by the news cycle. I check Reddit, BlueSky, and Mastodon, read a bunch of depressing updates about the state of the planet, and end up feeling helpless and alone. Eventually, I resist the temptation and turn to a good book. It’s a real pattern—feeling compelled to check the news, only to realize it does nothing for my peace of mind.

One app that doesn’t really depress me, though, is LinkedIn. That’s because my feed is limited to updates about observability, artificial intelligence, updates from friends, colleagues, and, unfortunately, a lot of people who take themselves way too seriously—which is annoying but not depressing. For the most part, LinkedIn is a refuge from all the bleak geopolitical stuff. And that’s a good thing.

But it’s also a little weird, isn’t it? My LinkedIn feed is so absurdly disconnected from what’s happening just beyond the gates. It’s like that dog, drinking coffee, saying everything is fine. Or like the eventual victims of a horror movie who decide to brush things off, even though Jason, Chucky, or Freddy Krueger already showed up a few scenes earlier. I often catch myself on LinkedIn, responding to some random post about Kubernetes, doing normal LinkedIn things, then stopping and thinking, What the hell are we all doing here?

As George Orwell said, “In our age, there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’” I’m not sure what George would make of LinkedIn. No doubt, he wouldn’t be very impressed. But I definitely prefer it this way—I think we all do. Software and tech are as much of an escape as the book I’m reading (Lonesome Dove). The thing is, I’m not sure if these boundaries will hold—or if they should hold. And I wonder if and when those lines will blur.