Last Saturday morning, I woke up at my usual time.
The sun was shining warmly on my window and the birds were chirping their favourite happy songs.
Life was wonderful.
After brushing my teeth and frying some scrambled egg to go with my toast for myself and my family, I sat down and opened my Linkedin App to see if anything interesting had happened in the world since the night before.
But all I got was the error message below:
I thought it was an error, so I clicked further and found out that there were 2 types of Restrictions – a Temporary one (for folks who send out too many invites in a day) and a Permanent one (for REALLY, REALLY Egregious repeat offenders who commit untold crimes against humanity..see the blogpost below).
And it seems, I got the PERMANENT RESTRICTION!!!
Now, the first thing I did was to wonder…What #LinkedinCrimes might I have committed in the past month? Some came to mind…
- Did I make too many snarky comments to puffy people who posted “I’m so humbled that I won 5 Awards last night”?
- Perhaps I let slip the “SH*T” word during our last Friday morning Weekly Linkedin LIVE show with my Co-founder, Sze-Yen Chee ?
- Or maybe I had been declining too many invitations-to-connect from suspicious characters, you know, the ones with ultra-provocative profile pictures but with career-history details more scant than the clothes they were wearing?
Then, I received an email explaining me the Grave Sin I had committed to get myself permanently barred from this platform.
It seems that I’m a Fraud!
Oh no… I always knew that there was some justification to my #ImposterSyndrome!
I felt wronged.
I felt perplexed.
I felt #ANGRY.
So I sent an email to the help-desk seeking clarification and received a sort of ‘we’re really busy now and we’ll get back to you when we get back to you’ response.
Then I was reminded of a case where a local LinkedIn expert was locked out of his own LinkedIn Account (oh, the irony!) for over a year – so, I just decided to close the app and not let it worry me…
And it was GLORIOUS!
For the first time in years, my LinkedIn app did not chime to let me know someone messaged me and did not beep to notify me that some random dude liked my post.
The peace and tranquility exuding from my mobile phone was surreal, especially since it was a long-weekend here in Singapore.
The birds chirped their favourite tunes and the sunlight warmly caressed my face as I stood outside my garden to experience ‘LinkedIn Freedom‘ for the first time since I became a Member in 2005.
Sure, I had a couple of friends who sent me urgent messages over whatsapp asking if my account had been hacked, but apart from that, it was a peaceful long weekend!
But on Wednesday, I finally received a response from the LinkedIn crew.
And my Phone sprung back to life… beeping, chiming, forcing me to read my countless messages on the messaging app.
Goodbye, peace and quiet…
And I guess the thing that irked me the most was that this Nicole from LinkedIn who replied… did not even offer an explanation or apology for what had happened.
But anyway, I have learnt 3 lessons from this episode:
- Social Media Apps can suck up way too much of your time if you’re not careful. Shutting them off over the weekend could actually enhance your state of wellness.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Yes, we use LinkedIn a lot for our marketing, but luckily, we still have our weekly National Radio show on KISS92FM that gets our ideas out to the public. In the coming months, we will be more active on Insta and TikTok. (but you won’t see me dancing on it)
- One man’s Jail is another man’s Freedom. There is always a brighter side to things. Yes, I could have chosen to remain upset at being wronged, or fume at the potential loss of revenue, but I chose to look at the bright side of things.
Anyway, I’m just glad to be back and sharing these ideas with you… and hopefully, I won’t get PERMANENTLY BANNED this time for writing this story!
Cheers!