I WAS CHECKING OUT MY HUSBAND’S LINKEDIN PAGE, and I noticed he’d been endorsed for both English and finite element analysis. This was clearly a mistake because he teaches math and computers, and I’m the resident English expert in the family. I’m also not sure what finite element analysis is, but I’ve never heard him talk about it, so I can’t imagine he knows much about it.

Eager to be helpful, I searched for the Un-endorse Button. But would you believe there wasn’t one? So that’s my million-dollar idea! LinkedIn should add an Un-endorse Button.

Can you imagine how useful this would be? People endorse each other so casually, but now, good Samaritans like me could troll through people’s pages and cull skills that are only mediocre.

The ramifications of this idea are limitless. Sometimes people applying for professional office jobs post sexy pictures of themselves in skimpy clothing on LinkedIn. I’d like to Un-endorse them as people. On babysitting websites, potential sitters post provocative pictures of themselves. That’s creepy. I’d like to Un-endorse them, too.

Or what about in real life? I once ran into an old acquaintance who asked me when my baby was due. I’d given birth three weeks earlier.

The woman then segued into a story about how she was a surrogate mother of twins for her friend. I would have liked it if there had been an Un-endorse Button hanging nearby. Then I would have said, “Wow! How selfless and kind of you!” Un-endorse.

My ideas for social media improvement are not limited to LinkedIn. Facebook also could benefit from my services. I think we’ve all noticed that Facebook only allows us to “Like” other people’s status updates — and when someone posts that he lost his job, totaled his car, and invested heavily in MySpace, and 287 people “Like” it, it feels wrong. We really need an “Unlike” or “That’s a bummer” button. (Or maybe an Un-endorse ButtonTM, patent pending.)

The problem is that these sites are insisting we like and endorse everything all the time. But maybe I don’t “Like” it when I see that an old friend has a brain tumor. And maybe I’d like to say, “No! Andy doesn’t know finite element analysis!”

For the record, my husband said that he does know what finite element analysis is and that he deserves the endorsement. I didn’t want to be one-upped, so I said I was going to endorse myself for infinite element analysis. He said that’s not a thing. But he’s not endorsed for it, so he wouldn’t really know.

And it’s not like anyone can Un-endorse me after I do it.

Kirstin Odegaard runs the Benicia Tutoring Center. Read and comment on her writings at www.kodegaard.com.

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