The Pressure to Agree

William Davies's What is LinkedIn? begins with a familiar style of internet writing: short sentences, generous line breaks, and ordinary observations delivered as moments of profound discovery. His name for it is “mindful slop.” The essay follows that style into a more interesting question about what happens to conversation when everyone feels obliged to be agreeable.

Davies gives LinkedIn credit for being useful and relatively pleasant. A space where people can share work without being dragged into an argument has obvious attractions. But professional self-presentation comes with pressures of its own. When a future employer might be reading, enthusiasm is a safer public emotion than doubt, frustration, or an awkwardly specific objection. Over time, the things people feel able to say can become very narrow, however warmly they say them.

What stays with me is the possibility that we can lose the habit of disagreement while feeling that communication is improving. A thoughtful reply sometimes needs to disappoint us. It might question an example, resist a conclusion, or ask us to explain a phrase we hoped would pass for wisdom. Those small interruptions give a conversation somewhere to go.

There are good reasons to want a kinder internet, and nobody owes their professional network an argument that could cost them their livelihood. Still, kindness should leave room for an honest answer. Davies's essay is a welcome invitation to notice when the wish to make one another comfortable starts deciding what can be said.