In 2019, during my Artificial Intelligence class at Smith School of Business at Queen's University , Jonathan Aikman opened the first lecture with a black-and-white photograph of ice cutters in Quebec. Men stood on the frozen St. Lawrence River, harvesting blocks of ice for household and industrial use. Before mechanical refrigeration, this was skilled labour. It had tools, timing, discipline, logistics, and danger. Ice moved from river to warehouse to kitchen. A whole chain

LinkedIn is ridiculous. The AI-written humblebrags. The heroic layoff stories. The leadership lessons from airport delays. The posts that make you want to close the app and reconsider literacy. And yet… What if LinkedIn is still too useful to abandon? My new article argues that LinkedIn is not just a cringe machine. It is also one of the last public mirrors of the labour market: absurd, artificial, annoying, and still strangely necessary.