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CEO’s ‘Crying Selfie’ Goes Viral

The CEO of HyperSocial has been heavily criticised online after sharing a ‘crying selfie’ on a LinkedIn post in which he discusses ‘layoffs’.
Credit: @bradenwallake/LinkedIn & @wallakebraden/Instagram

The CEO of HyperSocial has been heavily criticised online after sharing a ‘crying selfie’ on a LinkedIn post in which he discusses ‘layoffs’ at the company.

Braden Wallake, who heads the company that specialises in LinkedIn ‘optimisation,’ said in the post that he was emotional about having to sack staff.

He captioned the image: “This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share. 

Watch as the CEO gets roasted over his ‘crying selfie’ below…

“I’ve gone back and forth whether to post this or not. We just had to lay off a few of our employees. 

“I’ve seen a lot of layoffs over the last few weeks on LinkedIn. 

“Most of those are due to the economy, or whatever other reason. Ours? My fault.

“Days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was only money-driven and didn’t care about who he hurt along the way. But I’m not. 

“So, I just want people to see, that not every CEO out there is cold-hearted and doesn’t care when he/she have to lay people off. 

“I’m sure there are hundreds and thousands of others like me. The ones you don’t see talked about. 

“Because they didn’t lay off 50 or 500 or 5000 employees. They laid off 1 or 2 or 3…that would still be here if better decisions had been made.

I know it isn’t professional to tell my employees that I love them. But from the bottom of my heart, I hope they know how much I do.

“Every single one. Every single story. Every single thing that makes them smile and every single thing that makes them cry. Their families. Their friends. Their hobbies.

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“I’ve always hired people based on who they are as people. People with great hearts, and great souls.

“And I can’t think of a lower moment than this.”

The post went viral, with more than 33,000 reactions and nearly 7,000 comments – many of whom were not impressed and deemed the selfie and accompanying words to be for ‘optics and theatrics,’ according to Newsweek.

One commenter said: “A truly empathetic and compassionate person would never think of posting a crying selfie to their followers. All optics and theatrics. A shame.”

Another wrote: “Why not decrease your own salary/overall comp in order to keep your employees? There’s a difference between saying you take responsibility and acting like it.”

Wallake responded to this, writing: “I’ve lived well below my means, and my partner is much better at saving than I am.”

Others did praise the CEO for his openness and evident vulnerability, with one user saying: “It’s incredibly powerful of you to be vulnerable and put your feelings out there.

“Hopefully people can take something away from that, and hopefully we’ll see more of that, especially from men in positions from power.”

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Written by Cal Gaunt

Cal is a former content editor at IGV who specialised in writing trending and entertainment news. He previously worked as a news reporter at the Lancashire Telegraph and earned an NCTJ in Sports Journalism.