Every company doing perfectly reputable, above-board business today needs a crisp and descriptive LinkedIn profile. And yes, that includes harrowingly evil and entirely fictitious firms like “Lumon Industries.”
That’s right. Lumon, the ominous company that serves as a setting in the creepy drama Severance on Apple TV+, has a new LinkedIn profile. And it attempts to set the record straight about what some people are saying about the company.
Lumon Industries on LinkedIn
The Lumon Industries profile on LinkedIn links to a parent page from Red Hour Films, aka Red Hour Productions. That’s actor Ben Stiller’s production company, which is part of the team behind the Apple TV+ series Severance. Stiller serves as an executive producer on the show and directed six of the first season’s nine episodes.
The “About” section of the profile takes a perfectly non-threatening tone in vaguely describing the company and its Severance surgical procedure:
Lumon is a fictitious company from the Apple Original Series, Severance, streaming on Apple TV+.
Lumon Industries is a leading biotech company. Founded by the visionary Kier Eagan, we pride ourselves on maintaining his legacy of excellence and adhering to his 9 core principles: Vision, Verve, Wit, Cheer, Humility, Benevolence, Nimbleness, Probity and Wiles.
What sets us apart from other workplaces? We offer select employees access to our patented Severance process. What is Severance? Imagine being able to come into work completely uninhibited by your home problems. Or imagine being able to go home and never think about work.
Using a minimally invasive surgical technique, we are able to ‘sever’ your brain so that, essentially, you’ve got a part of you that works and a part of you that plays. We want to change the way that major corporations approach the ever evasive, “work-life balance.”
Not happy about that ‘tell-all’ book about Lumon
The LinkedIn profile includes a post decrying a “tell-all” book about what’s really going on at Lumon that Apple Books released on Friday as a companion to the show. The book, titled Severance: The Lexington Letter, is “authored” by a former Lumon employee who underwent the Severance procedure. She discovers awful truths about Lumon and seeks to tell the world.
An “official statement” from the Lumon Legal Department on LinkedIn states the company does not “confirm or support” the book’s contents and orders everyone to “delete it immediately.”
Nice, normal corporate videos
“Welcome to the Family,” says the closing title screen on every video featured in the LinkedIn profile. Each of the five short “Tour Lumon with Dylan G.” videos — all under 1 minute — features Dylan G. (played by Zach Cherry) giving a tour of the firm’s offices.
That is, he leads tours of the areas around his department, Macrodata Refinement. The kitchenette. The bathroom. The lobby. The giant work room with four cubicles clustered in the center. Other departments of the company, and the disturbing histories the departments have with each other, are slowly revealed during the course of the show.
In all five videos, parts of Dylan’s monologue to the camera is bleeped out, as someone censors him and his snarky asides about the company.
The LinkedIn profile could be mistaken as legitimate, or nonfictional, by someone unfamiliar with the hit series. However, if they click on the “Visit website” link, they go straight to the AppleTV+ app and its Severance page, where they can watch the show.
Six episodes of the show are currently available, and so far the series holds fast to the mystery about what the ominous “Lumon Industries” actually does, and why. The remaining three episodes stream weekly on Fridays.
Apple TV+ is available by subscription for $4.99 a month.
