Which Came First ?

Today I experienced that age old dilemma of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Otherwise known as Catch 22, the question provides circular reasoning at its best, about which many authors have written, besides Joseph Heller.

As followers of this blog may know, I am in the throes of (with very distinct air quotes) establishing my platform. Something which appears to be absolutely necessary in this age of social media. In so doing, I ventured onto LinkedIn, as I have previously mentioned. LinkedIn can best be described as the older more stately brother of Facebook, everything Facebook promises to be but isn't and without the familiarity of befriending everyone who has not yet figured out the overly complex and laborious process of privacy settings. As a result, the excellent LinkedIn requires you to effectively know the people you are trying to link to, although you cannot get to know them without first linking. Ah, you say, this is to pull you in and get you to spend money - if you subscribe, you can send "In Messages" to total strangers! I'm not sure I actually want to do that if the total stranger has in fact got their privacy settings arranged to prevent me contacting them normally, just because I have paid, doesn't mean that they suddenly will welcome my advances.

A case in point, I am a new member and my LinkedIn page is therefore not the most detailed nor does it come with a large pack of ravenous readers. I came across a writing group that allows people who wish to develop their writing skills to chat among themselves. However, apparently my profile was insufficient to tempt them, I was mistaken for a bot. I wrote to the moderator, explaining my situation. This had worked successfully with another (excellent) group, but in this case, I was still mistaken for a bot. So, not only do I have no profile, I am also apparently not human - very worrying. In order to prove I am human, I need to have an interesting profile, and in order to have an interesting profile I need to generate interest, not of the bot kind. Hmmmm...dilemma....Catch 22.