Went on Twitter, saw people say incredibly cynical shit like “Networking is just talking about what you do, even to a friend or guy on elevator”, got scared and left.
Now I’m revising my entire life for occasions when I thought I was having a friendly conversation while my interlocutor was trying to use me for some creepy networking purposes.
Clarissa's Blog 
Or worse, they’re trying to use you as a prop in their latest novel …
[notices the Secret Squirrels are now looking at me rather angrily]
Fortunately writing fiction is considerably more involved than assembling a menagerie ensemble cast of obfuscated real people you’ve met during your wanderings. 🙂
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When I joined my university as a grad student a talk was given regarding the importance of networking. It seemed rather sycophantic.
I can understand contacting somebody with similar scholarly interests for the purpose of research collaboration, but blanket networking just seems very inappropriate.
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Exactly. People always know when you are trying to network them and lose their respect for you.
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Also I just noticed a near duplicate comment below that you may want to remove from a first attempt. It appears a CS background does not enable one to operate a blog.
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This always happens the first time a person comments but the problem goes away once I let your first comment through.
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You probably also knew this, but the mention of elevators is a reference to the notion of “elevator pitches.” It’s supposed to be how entrepreneurs get the attention of financiers or something. They made at least two realicrap TV shows around this ritual, those being Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank, both starring the inimitable Kevin O’Leary, who is also featured in a television comedy duo called Lang and O’Leary in which Lang plays straight-man to O’Leary’s bizarre excursions into financial theories based on the most pessimistic imaginable assumptions about human nature.
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