IT SEEMS DURING lockdown, every middle-class woman of a certain age logged onto the internet and started building a personal brand.

LinkedIn got hit the worst.

Anyone with a dream and a 40 hour workweek to kill could toggle Creator Mode and instantly transform into an aspiring 6-figure solopreneur.

With the barrier to entry effectively nil, "business" had become democratized.

And with it, came the erosion of any sense of actual business.

News and industry insights were quickly modernized into motivational quotes and selfies.

Revenue and profit were sidelined for likes and followers.

And LinkedIn’s new creator platform provided the requisite dopamine to power the whole charade.

But amongst the familiar faces of grifters and predators you’d expect such an opportunity to attract, one underdog not only emerged, but claimed her place in this brave new world:

The LinkedIn Spinster.

Let’s give out some awards.

Top Spinster 🧶

Meet Sadia Ali, financial advisor and self-proclaimed "black sheep" of the wealthy expat community in Dubai:

Born and raised in London, university-educated Sadia has faced a silent struggle her entire professional life.

Her crime?

Sadia is simply the unwitting victim of misogynistic cultural standards where assumed parents in her fictionalized narrative expect, nay, demand she fulfill the basic human biological predisposition of entering into a long term relationship.

But instead of buckling to the pressure, Sadia has bravely managed to stay single well into her 30s, a talking point she considers central to her personal brand.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s going on here.

On this topic, I’m overqualified

As a closeted Pakistani, there’s few things I loathe more than outing myself to play the race card.

But in this case I feel a certain responsibility to emerge from the shadows and set the record straight.

In her post, Sadia portrays her struggle against the patriarchy as part of a false paradigm where financial independence is at odds with family values.

Sadia’s main argument is that if, somehow, she should enter into a relationship, it would be an affront to her womanly independence.

Sadia proposes the individualistic pursuit of wealth as a nobler alternative to committed relationships.

All of which is particularly unconvincing given her socioeconomic background.

At first glance, one may write Sadia off as just another clout-chasing spinster willing to do anything for a bit of attention.

I let her know as much, albeit succinctly.

Her response was profoundly telling.

What negativity was she referring to?

What tally had she been keeping?

You see, I’ve been around the social media block a couple times.

And when an established creator demonstrates hypersensitivity to online criticism, it can only mean one thing.

Grifters take great care to curate their public image.

And the greater the grift, the more defensive and irrational they become.

Because their identity and livelihood are tied to their online persona, an attack on their content is an attack on their very existence.

That was 2 red flags and I hadn’t even done anything yet.

Sadia wasn’t going to be an open and shut case of run-of-the-mill grifter. She was going to be something far greater.

To find out exactly what, I conducted a detailed forensics investigation on Sadia’s LinkedIn profile.

How many selfies can one take?

Sadia positions herself as a strong sigma female who has transcended society’s antiquated value system to become free of the shackles Maslow’s hierarchy imposes on the rest of us.

Meanwhile, her posting history tells a different story.

Which we can’t begin to unpack without addressing the elephant in Sadia’s room: the so many bloody contextless selfies.

Sadia uses them to overtly market her femininity while claiming singlehood as a ‘lifestyle choice’.

Why the apparent contradiction?

To understand Sadia’s social media strategy, look at the demographics in her comment section.

Her content not only attracts the men she pretends to swear off, but also her ideal customer profile, younger women who idealize the lifestyle she portrays.

→ Sadia goes both ways ✔️

As you’ll see, seeking attention from both men and women is central to her grift.

Meet the matriarchy

Sadia’s core thesis for young women is that burying yourself in the pursuit of wealth is the solution to all of life’s problems.

Where have we heard that one before?

Sadia is part of a long lineup of new-age female thought leaders that mismatch toxic hustle bro tropes, Gen-Z lingo, and pink pastel color schemes into a Frankenstein ideology of femterialism.

If feminists advocate for equal access to rights, femterialists advocate for equal access to the patriarchal grift.

Instead of correcting the faults they attribute to modern male toxicity, they seek to rebrand and replicate them.

And the pink tax their subjects pay is a heavy one. Because happiness can never come from emulating a flawed system.

But by priming her audience with the lie of femterialism, it creates favorable market conditions for Sadia to hawk her services.

What other choice does Sadia have?

I’m sure Sadia is competent at her work.

But I’d be hard pressed to imagine her business would thrive on merit alone.

Financial planning is a crowded industry.

So offering her overly simplistic advice such as ‘stop spreading propaganda on social media’ probably misses the mark.

Not only would her business would take a major hit, but she as a person would, too.

Because Sadia has built something bigger than a business.

She’s built a “business”.

You know exactly what I mean.

Her product isn’t £350 introductory calls.

It’s herself.

She had successfully designed and packaged herself into a gross personification her ideal customer’s insecurities, challenges, and dreams.

Her main business driver is simply to exist, and communicate her existence.

And she needs this assumed identity as much as her fans do.

I’m sure Sadia never meant any harm when she started her LinkedIn.

She was just making the most of what she had available at the time: an iPhone 14 Pro Max and a deep rooted lack of self worth.

And the brand she’s built with that potent combo over the past couple years is quite impressive.

Because Sadia isn’t just a financial planner; she’s a female financial planner.

She’s not just taking selfies for attention, she’s overcoming centuries of inequality.

And she’s not even just a grifter. She’s a pioneering financial spinster.

Possibly LinkedIn’s first.

Sadia’s gender narrative is so intrinsically woven into her identity, the two can no longer be separated.

So she can’t just stop, because this is who she is.

Sadia has fulfilled the wet dream of every discount personal branding coach worldwide: she created a niche.

Sadia’s niche has managed to thread the needle to promote her corrupt ideology.

And she’s growing fast.

Because spinsters beget spinsters, through their propaganda and oblivious sycophants.

And therein lies the problem.

The number of clients Sadia can work with is a tiny fraction of the audience that sees her posts and are influenced by her ideas.

Financial independence is a worthy goal in its own rite, but when marketed on the back of a disingenuous value system it can become a damaging force at scale.

Because should a young woman sacrifice the majority of her productive years to reach financial independence, then what?

Without other priorities in life, what else is there to do besides chase more wealth?

It’s a bizarre endgame, unless material pursuit was the plan all along.

And by dismissing any critics as anti-feminist, there’s no room for reason or discourse in this entire travesty.

The freedom Sadia espouses is, in fact, a freedom from commitment, accountability, and responsibility.

And the rights Sadia fights for are entirely individualistic.

The right to do nothing and be nothing, to take more than you give, and to selfishly escape society’s balance sheet.

A fulfilling life built upon relationships with others requires confronting one’s own shortcomings, and that’s where real growth and development happen.

But it’s a terrifying proposition, and so most will stay stuck in the permanent purgatory of trying to control their lives through money.

And that’s not even as strange as how it ends for Sadia herself.

How does this story end?

All humans requires attention, affection, and connection to thrive.

But by excluding real relationships from the equation, Sadia resorts to career and social media to try to fill these voids in her life.

On paper, these ideals would hardly stand up to scrutiny, so she relies on fanciful lifestyle imagery to create the appearance of desirability that carries her message.

Sadia’s bait and switch relies on looking pretty for the setup, then presenting a forced sense of apathy towards the opposite sex.

This creates her ideal selling environment; her male audience wants what they can’t have, and her female audience wants a piece of the attention too.

But what will happen in 10 years when this biological ticking time bomb blows?

When Sadia no longer has the looks to do the heavy lifting, shallow male attention will fade, as will the appeal to her younger female audience.

When the gig is up, who will pick up the pieces?

Sadia won’t be able to just reverse course and walk away.

So will she double down on the facade?

Become a personal branding coach?

Write sponsored posts?

They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

But I don’t see how anything could prevent this trainwreck from happening, short of a full blow intervention involving deleting social media and being forced to spend time talking to older, married women who are both financially secure AND happy with their lives.

All I know is:

→ The midlife crisis on this one will be bad ✔️

Sacrificing relationships for the pursuit of wealth, under the guise of female empowerment, is not something to be celebrated.

Because there’s an inevitable truth that no amount of makeup, filters, or attempted flattering angles can overcome:

Behind every aging hustle girl, boss b*tch and she-ro, lies the dark shadow of the lonely spinster she harbors inside, threatening to consume her whole at any moment.

I’m not sure what else can be said on the topic.

I’ll leave you with this:

Agree?

--

PS. My forensics investigation did eventually uncover the ‘negativity’ Sadia was referring to:

Just not before writing 2000 words on the subject.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Up-and-Coming Spinster 🪡

They’re not quite there yet, but give them some time

Jaguar finds product-market fit:

LinkedIn Wall of Shame

Having trouble keeping track of all the grifters, spinsters and predators?

I gotchu 👊🏽

Brace yourself, then click on one of the profiles below to see some of the most bafflingly inane content LinkedIn has to offer.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Know someone that should be on this list?

Reply to this email and submit their name. They’ll never know it was you.

That’s all for today.

Tune in next week as we conclude this thrilling 3-part series by tackling LinkedIn’s final boss: the predators.

Saleem 🤎