A friend recently brought to my attention that the popular job-seeking social media platform LinkedIn “might be creepy.” “Why do you say that?” I asked her, genuinely curious, because as a creative, the only messages I receive on that site are from dudes telling me their wives love my Bachelor recaps and LinkedIn job recruiters letting me know that my degree in creative writing has qualified me for a job opening in janitorial services. While the latter makes me want to douse myself in lighter fluid and set myself on fire, and the former is a little weird but mostly flattering (fun fact: I need to be constantly praised, so, like, keep it up men), I wouldn’t call either of those interactions “creepy.” But it did get me thinking, is LinkedIn creepy? Was I missing something here? Are men, having been cancelled from every other app, now trying to make LinkedIn their final frontier? I’ve literally investigated claims for less. So, buckle up, betches, because I’m about to call men out on all their bullsh*t. Again.
As I mentioned, my friend, let’s called her “Meg,” originally brought this whole LinkedIn creepy scandal to my attention. Meg told me she was constantly being harassed by older men who would slide into her DMs ON A PROFESSIONAL JOB-SEEKING SITE to tell her she’s pretty and ask her on dates. My immediate follow-up question was did she accidentally tap into her Hinge messages and not her LinkedIn messages? I just couldn’t imagine a world where business betches like myself were having to virtually fend off men.
MEG: LinkedIn is cancelled because men are trash.
ME TO THE MEN OF LINKEDIN:
After I spoke with Meg, I checked my recent requested connections. ALL of them were from men. The majority of them looked like they could be my dad’s age or older, and almost none of them were in the same field as me or had any mutual connections with me. Again, it was strange, definitely suspect, but not outright damning.
So I started asking other women in my life about their experiences with LinkedIn. Women I worked with, women I’d lived with in New York City, women I’d gone to college with in North Carolina. Every single one of them could list an uncomfortable encounter. One friend told me she gets DMs at least once a week from strange men asking for her number or sending her messages in all emojis, which is fine if this is Instagram and you’ve posted a fire bikini selfie, but not on a goddamn job site!
I took to Google and found out that last year Buzzfeed published an entire article about women taking to Twitter to ask men to please stop treating LinkedIn like their own personal dating site. Welcome to 2018, ladies, where no place is safe anymore, especially not the workforce! God, I wish I was kidding.
If you have working eyes and ears then you know that over the last two years, the ladies of the #MeToo movement have been out here doing the lord’s work and exposing (pun intended) every Tom, Dick, and Harry for being the disgusting scumbags they really are. They shed light on an issue which every woman with a pulse was already aware of: if you show up to work with breasts, then you’re going to get hit on/be treated differently/have to fight off unwarranted touches/generally be made uncomfortable by men at some point in your career. But it’s chill because that’s professionalism, ladies, look it up!!
Obviously, these are not new issues. For as long as there have been women in the workforce, there has been sexism and sexual harassment, there has been women sacrificing their dignity and, in some instances, their safety for the sake of their careers. And GODDAMNIT it’s got to stop. Women should be able to online shop on their phones, discreetly and under the table, during another useless department meeting without their bosses saying something inappropriate about their outfits. Women should be able to job search and network and see if their ex’s new girlfriend has a better salary than them without being f*cking romantically propositioned in the process. This is 2018, for god’s sake! Men, do better.
So, in conclusion, men are still trash and apparently so is your favorite networking site. Stay vigilant, ladies.
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IMAGES: Giphy (2); @rawpixel /Unsplash (1)
It’s a new day in Hollywood, which means there are new accusations against a powerful Hollywood man. And surprise surprise, betches, that man is James Franco, someone who’s made me make this face:
For 10 years now. Following the Golden Globes, five women came forward being like, “SNATCH THAT TIME’S UP PIN OFF THIS ASSHOLE’S LAPEL, because he does not deserve to be wearing it.”
Franco, who’s like built a reputation on being sooo busy, found time to run an acting school called Studio 4 that had a class, amongst others, called Sex Scene Master Class. You’re allowed to pause, give that a huge side eye, and now continue reading. He allegedly abused his power dynamic as teacher by telling girls to take off their tops and would get angry when they wouldn’t. One woman who starred opposite him in a film claimed he majorly crossed the line when he removed her protective plastic genital shield during an orgy scene where he was simulating oral sex on her. So it sounds like Franco is exactly what he looks like? A creep.
Of course he is denying everything because that’s par for course with these types of ghoulish men. Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers both were like, point blank, “are you a creep?” And he had the audacity to say he wasn’t, but if he was, he’d take responsibility for it. Biiiittcchhhh.
We all remember when he slid into a 17-year-old’s DMs on Instagram, asking her how old she was and where her hotel room was? When she was like, “honey I literally just got my drivers license, back off,” he did not back off and continued to digitally hover on her ‘gram. He obvs got caught doing that because he wasn’t slick enough to be doing any of this in the DMs and when he was called out, he claimed that “social media is tricky.” Honey, social media might be tricky, but being a pedophile isn’t,
So flush your Freaks & Geeks DVDs down the toilet, because we’re done with Franco. You can get your Busy Phillips fix from her Instagram stories. Or like, keep the DVDS, but have a frank converation with yourself about how worshipping the men in shows like this gives them the power to abuse for many years after the show is cancelled. Franco has lived up to his movie’s name and is truly a disaster artist. Bye.
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