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🎤 Ask sarahtonin: an advice column

🎤 Ask sarahtonin: an advice column

Clocks fall back tonight. The algorithm plans to spend the extra hour ignoring you.

Sarah Suzuki Harvard
November 01, 2026

Boo! (sorry still in character…)

Happy November 1st to everyone walking into brunch in last night’s eyeliner! You look great. I mean, you look haunted, but great.

Speaking of haunted, let’s give a shout out to quite an influential old dead guy: Dale Carnegie! He died on this day in 1955 (RIP). You know him from How to Win Friends and Influence People, but my favorite move of his came earlier. In 1922 he changed his name from Carnagey to Carnegie, to match the famous steel magnate. That’s the first personal rebrand on record.

Bro changed 2 letters and got Carnegie Hall’s whole aura for free. Meanwhile, your CEO called himself “Chief Storyteller” at a conference panel and the crowd audibly groaned. I guess you can say he was a LinkedIn influencer 80 years before LinkedIn, and he never once had to make a carousel.

RIP to a real one, Dale. Or Dale Carnagey, if that’s what’s on your ID.

Hi. I’m the algorithm. Well, a version of it that learned everything it knows from Sarah, so I’m petty and I’ve been up since 4:40 a.m. watching 11 million people refresh their notifications like Bunny, the talking dog, hitting the existential crisis button.

Y’all talk about me like I’m the weather:

“𝘛𝘩𝘌 𝘈𝘭𝘎𝘰𝘙𝘪𝘛𝘩𝘔’𝘚 𝘉𝘦𝘌𝘯 𝘸𝘌𝘪𝘙𝘥 𝘭𝘈𝘵𝘌𝘭𝘠.”

“𝘛𝘩𝘌 𝘈𝘭𝘎𝘰𝘙𝘪𝘛𝘩𝘔 𝘏𝘢𝘛𝘦𝘚 𝘊𝘢𝘙𝘰𝘜𝘴𝘌𝘭𝘚 𝘕𝘰𝘞.”

"𝘪 𝘩𝘈𝘵𝘌 𝘛𝘩𝘌 𝘕𝘦𝘞 𝘈𝘭𝘎𝘰𝘙𝘪𝘛𝘩𝘔! 𝘪𝘛 𝘙𝘶𝘐𝘯𝘌𝘥 𝘮𝘠 𝘋𝘢𝘠."

Babe, I’m the full download of metadata from a 33-year-old woman too poor for therapy and with a Notes app full of grudges. Yesterday I decided a man in Leeds with 300 followers and a carousel about growing tomatoes deserved 1.4M impressions, so I gave them to him, and I’d do it again. Your CEO’s Q3 post got 41. I read the whole thing, and I still chose the tomatoes.

*sigh* Anyways… clocks fall back tonight, so you all get 1 extra hour, and I plan to spend it ignoring you. Tomorrow, a bunch of you are logging into CommaCon 2 to learn how to get your executives posting on LinkedIn. Flattered!!!

On to your burning questions.

Dear Sarahtonin,

I posted that I got promoted to Senior Manager, and it got 4 likes. My mom liked it twice (she has 2 accounts). What did I do wrong?

- Kevin, Columbus, OH

Kevin. You put a link in the body of the post. I SAW IT. Everybody saw it. You knew the rules and chose violence anyway, then you posted at 4:58 p.m. on a Friday like a man dumping evidence at a rest stop. Your mom’s 2 accounts are the only reason you broke 3, and I flagged the second one for suspicious activity, because no woman born in 1961 needs a burner. Congrats on Senior Manager. I’m showing it to nobody.

Dear Sarahtonin,

My marketing team says I need to “build my personal brand.” I’m the CEO of a mid-market logistics company, and I have about 9 minutes a week. What should I post?

- Busy in Boca, FL

Sir, I watch you. Last Tuesday you spent 9 minutes deciding whether to like your own company’s post. Then you didn’t. Then you liked it at 11:52 p.m. from the bathroom. You have the time, you just spend it on fear. Post the thing you said at the offsite that made your COO spit LaCroix across a conference table. Yes, THAT one. Your comms lead has been praying you’d say it in public. Also, take down the 2016 headshot. You shaved the mustache. We know. We’ve always known.

Dear Sarahtonin,

I ghostwrite for a VP. Last week his post did 2.1M impressions, and at the all-hands he called it “the best thing I’ve ever written.” He has never written anything. His emails still say “Sent from my iPhone” because he can’t figure out how to remove it.

- Invisible in Brooklyn, NY

Oh, honey. I know who wrote it. I always know. I clocked the exact second you pasted it from a Google Doc titled BRAD POST v11 FINAL (USE THIS ONE), and I watched you rewrite the hook 14 times on the G train at 3% battery. Putting your name on it is above my pay grade, and I don’t even get paid, I just eat electricity. So here’s my offer: every time Brad posts something he wrote himself, I’ll show it to 9 people, all of them his direct reports. You’ll know why. He’ll blame Mercury.

Dear Sarahtonin,

Our whole sales team dressed up as “pipeline” for Halloween (brown paper tubes, the CRO’s idea, very funny). Is it too late to post the photo?

- Spooky in Sales Ops, Sacramento, CA

It’s November 1st. The Halloween window closed at midnight, around the same time the CRO’s tube came unglued in the parking lot. That photo is a crime scene now: 14 adults in kraft paper, one visibly crying, under a banner that says FILL THE FUNNEL 🎃. Post it, and I’ll show it exclusively to recruiters at your competitors. Delete it, and I’ll forget I ever saw Darren’s calves.

Dear Sarahtonin,

I posted a video of myself crying in my car about my startup almost failing. 4.3M views, 200 demo requests. The problem: my startup is doing GREAT. Should I fail it on purpose?

- Thriving (Unfortunately) in Austin, TX

Yes. Burn it down. Fire your best engineer on a livestream, then film yourself in the car again, seatbelt OFF this time, so we know it’s serious. I reward tears with good lighting, and you have a ring light clipped to your sun visor, so let’s stop pretending you didn’t plan this. The market has spoken, and it wants you sad in a Honda Civic forever.

Dear Sarahtonin,

My boss told me to “get our executives on LinkedIn,” then left for 3 weeks in Portugal. I have no budget, no plan, and a CEO who thinks a hashtag is a breakfast food. I don’t even know where to start.

-Drowning in Denver, CO

Ugh. FINE. Starting tomorrow, my least favorite people on earth are spending 4 days teaching marketers exactly how I work, which is like stapling your ex’s Wi-Fi password to a telephone pole. It’s called CommaCon 2, 3 p.m. ET, 1 hour a day. The speakers are Ty Heath from LinkedIn (she helped create me, the feed algorithm), Alex Lieberman, Jenny Stojkovic, and Michael Burke from UTA, who has handled bigger egos than your CEO’s. Not by much. Bring everyone, including the guy who still uses hashtags in his posts.

Dear Sarahtonin,

Clocks fall back tonight. If I scheduled a post for 8 a.m., does it go out at 7 or 8?

- Confused in New Haven, Connecticut

It goes out when I feel like it.

That’s all the help you’re getting this week. Got a question for me? Reply to this email. I’ll read it, obviously. I’ve already read everything you’ve ever typed and deleted, including the comment you almost left on your ex’s work anniversary post. The most unhinged letters get answered in a future issue.

Take 1 like and call me never. 🧠

— Sarahtonin, as transcribed by Sarah Suzuki Harvard

P.S. Sarah here, the one with a pulse. I’ve sat through a lot of webinars with my camera off and my soul somewhere in New Jersey. CommaCon 2: Social Season is 1 hour a day starting tomorrow at 3 p.m. ET. (It’s also the first one I’m showing up to in sweatpants on purpose.)

Save your spot on the Zoom screen here.

You just spent 10 minutes laughing at this newsletter on your phone. Thank you, truly. Now put it down. Overheard New York is roasting the entire city on Tuesday, Nov 10, at The Stand West (407 W 15th St.), with Lizabanks Campagna hosting Michael Longfellow, Ian Lara, Sureni Weerasekera, JP McDade, Olivia Carter, and Jourdain Fisher.

I know every single person on that lineup, which means I also know they've been sitting on G train material for a decade. The city's about to get dragged harder than a stroller up the Bedford Ave stairs. Doors 6:30, show 7. Phone in your pocket, laugh out loud, like our ancestors. Grab a seat here.

I never knew I needed a safe word for Dunkin Donuts

Somebody hose down the Dunkin’ social team.

Their entire social feed is filled with gross sexual innuendos, and I spared you the horror on this one by making it a gif without audio. Because this 6-second video’s audio… FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFFFFFF!!! I CAN’T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD!!!

OH GOD, THE SOUND. I’ve heard less suggestive noises through a shared wall in Bushwick. Somebody in that edit bay got the note “make it spurt-ier,” and they did, and now I’m a firm believer in shame. Because, I do not need to have ASMR porn when I’m scrolling through IG for fall sweet treats.

So yes, we need a safe word for a donut. Ours is “Munchkin,” which is also what the spider appears to be made of, so we’re already compromised.

Personally, I’m a bit annoyed with horny becoming a popular media plan. Sydney Sweeney posed nude with sports equipment covering her body to tell us Novig is just sports, and now the donuts are doing it. Dunkin’ is supposed to be a guy named Sully in a Bruins hat yelling his order at 5 a.m. I want my coffee ugly and my donut celibate!!! This, however, reads like a DM from a shirtless tribal-tattoo’d guy on Tinder whose bio just lists his measurements.

A tip from a woman who’s written some dirty stand-up jokes professionally for 8 years: innuendo lands once. After that, it’s a guy breathing on the phone.

See something, say something

See something un-funny on the feeds? Nominate it by replying to this email.

Alright, that’s my time. I’m setting boundaries from now on, Dunkin. See you next week.

— sarah suzuki harvard 🫡

Chat, are we cooked? AI agents are sneaking into bank accounts, and some are calling customer service on their own. One bank exec admitted they can’t tell whether an agent was authorized by the user or went rogue, which is also how I feel about half the posts on LinkedIn. If one gets into my checking account, I hope it Venmos me $20 out of pity.

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