Ladies, gentlemen, and that one guy still using the default “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” message in 2026: we need to talk.
Online platforms are not the Wild West. They are more like a shared office kitchen. You wouldn’t walk into someone’s kitchen, open the fridge, grab their yogurt, and leave without saying a word. Yet somehow, on LinkedIn, this exact behavior is considered “networking.”
The Default Connection Request: The Digital Equivalent of Grunting
Receiving a connection request that consists solely of LinkedIn’s pre-written, soul-crushing default message is, at best, disrespectful. At worst, it is actively impolite. It communicates one of three things:
- You are too busy/important/lazy to type two sentences.
- You do not actually know (or care) who I am.
- You are a bot. Or worse—an aspiring bot.
If you are going to reach out, have the basic human courtesy to introduce yourself. A single personalized sentence is all it takes. “Hi, I saw your post about [thing] and found it useful” is already a higher bar than 90% of the platform clears. “We met at [event]” is elite-tier. “I admire your work and would like to stay in touch” is practically poetry.
Anything less is the LinkedIn equivalent of walking up to someone at a conference, handing them your business card, and walking away without eye contact.
Special Mention: The “Paid Board Position / Consulting Opportunity” Meeting Request
Then there is the next level of nonsense: the unsolicited meeting request for a “paid board position” or “exciting consulting opportunity,” at best accompanied by vague flattery and zero substance.
Unless you are a scammer, this is not how adults operate. Real opportunities do not arrive like spam. They arrive with context, credibility, and usually some indication that the sender has done more research than “this person has a pulse and a job title.”
If your outreach strategy is “spray vague high-status language at strangers and hope someone bites,” you are not networking. You are fishing with a net made of red flags.
A Modest Proposal
Courtesy is not optional just because the platform is digital. The screen does not grant you a free pass to be rude. It simply makes the rudeness easier to scale.
So, a few simple rules:
- Personalize the connection request. Two sentences. That’s it.
- If you want a meeting, explain why in a way that does not sound like it was generated by a slightly intoxicated AI.
- If your message could be copy-pasted to 500 people without changing a word, do not send it.
- And if you are actually a scammer… well, at least own the bit. The rest of us are tired.
The rest of LinkedIn may have decided that manners are optional. Some of us have not. We are still here, still reading, and still judging you from what you wrote.
