I read fourteen LinkedIn profiles this week. Surgeons, hospital chief executives, clinic founders, the UK and the Gulf.
Stand numbers, award shortlists, campaign launches, a block of hashtags. The work is there. But you could swap these posts between two rival hospitals and nobody would notice, and readers can smell that. A post that could belong to anyone gets read the way anyone gets listened to.
A feed becomes that after it passes through enough hands. Marketing drafts it, compliance trims it, someone senior approves it, and the person whose name is on the profile presses share. Every pass takes out a little more of whatever only he could have said, until what survives is the announcement. Announcements are true. Nobody has ever changed their mind because of one.
Keep scrolling and years down there is one post where a person shows up. An illness that turned into a decision. An argument a man carried alone for a long time before he typed it. Under those posts, strangers write paragraphs back.
Then the feed returns to stands.
Chekhov was a doctor. Nobody remembers his clinic.
If you never write it, nothing happens. The feed stays full. The stands get announced. That is the whole cost, and it is paid in what nobody ever finds out about you.