Here's that bad advice you were hoping for

May 28, 2013 5:39 AM

Here's that bad advice you were hoping for is a Tumblr featuring carefully curated scathing advice column responses.
posted by Harald74 (56 comments total)

"vagina trap of bitchitude" is just an anmazing turn of phrase.
posted by Mezentian at 5:41 AM on May 28, 2013 [4 favorites]

...he’s cheated on her with me in the past—I’m talking way back when, like a year ago.

It's easy to write the answer when you wrote the question yourself.
posted by DU at 5:52 AM on May 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

Oops, maybe a mod will be so kind as to correct my typo?
posted by Harald74 at 5:53 AM on May 28, 2013

Item, you are so uncool. All the cool kids are into this scatching. It's remix culture. It's anmazing.

Gramma natzi.

(Al least my typo is wine-related).
posted by Mezentian at 5:55 AM on May 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

This is a lot of fun.
posted by orange swan at 5:56 AM on May 28, 2013

Mod note: Okay, FPP spelling is now unscathed.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 6:00 AM on May 28, 2013 [7 favorites]

It's easy to write the answer when you wrote the question yourself.

Actually, the sources of the questions are given at the top of each post. (Was going to FPP this myself *shakes fist*)
posted by MartinWisse at 6:00 AM on May 28, 2013 [4 favorites]

Yeah, I read this over lunch today.

I do wonder about the reality of the letter writers, especially in this Internet age, but I have no doubt they were printed letters. I once had a not-profitable, short-lived side-business in making up and answering such letters from children in the guise of a mouse-rat thing.
posted by Mezentian at 6:00 AM on May 28, 2013

It was like seeing a great white whale breaching alongside dolphins.

tears... snorfing, trying not to laugh out loud at the office...

(these are all really good)
posted by fraula at 6:01 AM on May 28, 2013 [5 favorites]

I only take advice from Jah [UYD4L]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:03 AM on May 28, 2013

Actually, the sources of the questions are given at the top of each post.

Oh, I see it now. OK, so I won't doubt the tumblr owner's sincerity but I still doubt the question is real. My wife has an semi-advice-like thing going and we've detected quite a few fake questions. Proof? Accidental usage of the same email address describing mutually impossible situations.
posted by DU at 6:05 AM on May 28, 2013

I think the FPP is misleading...it looks like the tumblr owner is writing the jokey responses to published questions, but the writeup here says "is a Tumblr featuring carefully curated scathing advice column responses."

It's not curated, it's original content, correct?
posted by sweetkid at 6:10 AM on May 28, 2013 [11 favorites]

Maybe not genuine, but anyone that will bag on a puke-tastic letter to Cary Tennis is alright in my book. I can only imagine the letters he chooses to reject, let alone answer.
posted by PuppyCat at 6:13 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is great.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:19 AM on May 28, 2013

God i wish i could write responses like this in askme sometimes. And sometimes I think it's good that I can't.
posted by empath at 6:23 AM on May 28, 2013 [15 favorites]

I once had a not-profitable, short-lived side-business in making up and answering such letters from children in the guise of a mouse-rat thing.

I still have my copy of your now sadly out of print collection, Gibberingly Yours, Brown Jenkins.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:25 AM on May 28, 2013 [4 favorites]

So great.
posted by iamkimiam at 6:38 AM on May 28, 2013

You are right and everyone who doesn’t agree with you is wrong! Your cultural norms are truer than everyone else’s. Things you think and do are real and authentic and things other people think and do which are not the same things that you think and do are aberrant and incorrect.

I'm going to have this cross-stitched into a sampler. It's just perfect for so many situations.
posted by xingcat at 6:45 AM on May 28, 2013 [35 favorites]

The answers from advice columns I read regularly are the real answers.

Dear Abby seems peppier than I remember. She says fuck now?
posted by bq at 6:51 AM on May 28, 2013

Thank the Sweet Lamb Jesus, who wrote the U.S. Constitution in his own blood, that people like you have the courage to look down on others who don’t conform to historically determined modes of gender-assigned sartorial norms!

This is going to kill my time, but so wonderfully!
posted by corb at 6:53 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's not curated, it's original content, correct?

Yeah, the responses are not from the original advice columns. Cary Tennis, for one, actually wrote a serious answer to "Blind Writer," rather than a "fap fap fap" animated gif. The fap fap fap answer is definitely more apt, though.
posted by torticat at 6:55 AM on May 28, 2013 [9 favorites]

The answers from advice columns I read regularly are the real answers.

The header for each entry has a link to the original advice column. These aren't the real answers.
posted by torticat at 7:02 AM on May 28, 2013

Yeah, not the real answers.

See, from the NYT:

Our group of close friends has spent the last few years attending one another’s weddings. We all give gifts to the newlyweds, except for one couple who hasn’t given gifts to anyone. Now the nongivers are getting married. Some of us do not want to gift them at all, whereas others think a more modest than normal gift is in order. What do you think?

Anonymous

I am a very small person. And nothing makes me feel superior like behaving graciously toward stinkers. So I would give normally and feel great about myself. But I have no bone to pick with those who would stiff this couple or downsize from normal giving levels. (Still, there is that thing about two wrongs not making a right, correct?)

Hardly any snark!
posted by munyeca at 7:03 AM on May 28, 2013

It’s so rare to come across one of those real life quandaries to which the answer is truly unclear.

“Is it creepy to offer a dead woman’s vibrator to someone else?” is one of those questions.

And that's where I had to stop because I'm making weird sounds trying to stifle my giggles.
posted by gladly at 7:05 AM on May 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

That's one way to share an intimate bond with the dearly departed.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:17 AM on May 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

The response to this one completely missed the opportunity for a three-paragraph screed on the failure to use the word "whom" -- and the copy editors who miss it, too.
posted by Madamina at 7:21 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

I do wonder about the reality of the letter writers

Newspapers never see the sausage being made on syndicated work -- they just get the final product.

You're right to be skeptical. Most of the letters are completely made up, and/or so heavily edited that they might as well be. And it doesn't matter any more -- readership is tiny. Take it from me, the guy that wrote the horoscopes one week because we didn't get our shipment on time.

The letters about celebrities in Parade magazine and other entertainment mags are also made-up, and in this case are actually PR plants. ("What is Brad Pitt doing these days?")
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:23 AM on May 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

Cool Papa Bell, do you mean to tell me I WON'T be looked to as a leader in work relations this week?!
posted by maryr at 7:49 AM on May 28, 2013

It's like a carefully curated selection of deleted AskMe responses!

Well the one linked here would be hard to top
posted by burnmp3s at 7:52 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

bahahahaaaaa [invader zim voice] yess... Yess... YESS!!!

New subsite idea! DontAskMe
- where snark rules and correct answers are determined by favourite count!
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:53 AM on May 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

This one sounds like it was written by The Onion's editorial cartoonist.
posted by mcmile at 7:53 AM on May 28, 2013

I was crying with laughter (an unusual response for me) reading these last night.
posted by stevil at 7:54 AM on May 28, 2013

Cool Papa Bell, do you mean to tell me I WON'T be looked to as a leader in work relations this week?!

I'm saying you should take Runs Like the Wind at 8-to-1 in the fourth race at Belmont Park.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:55 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

“Is it creepy to offer a dead woman’s vibrator to someone else?”

Creepier than setting someone up on a blind date with a widower?
posted by straight at 8:04 AM on May 28, 2013

Cool Papa Bell: The letters about celebrities in Parade magazine and other entertainment mags are also made-up, and in this case are actually PR plants. ("What is Brad Pitt doing these days?")

You mean... there ISN'T a steak dinner riding on this???
posted by Madamina at 8:08 AM on May 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

Gentle Reader,

Have you considered casually tossing your monocle at her skirts?

Some of the responses are toooooo over the top. But this one. It was perfect.
posted by bilabial at 8:09 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

The best is when the official response is snarkier than the fake one.
Compare: Miss Manners (second Q) vs Tumblr.
posted by Lemurrhea at 8:16 AM on May 28, 2013 [8 favorites]

Agreed. Judith Martin (a.k.a. Miss Manners) cannot be out-snarked.
posted by roger ackroyd at 8:21 AM on May 28, 2013 [8 favorites]

I did like the sarcasm of the first one... pity I can't stay to browse further... nice link though!
posted by infini at 8:23 AM on May 28, 2013

I really dislike this. I'll never be sure of the reason (introspection is a myth) but there it is.
posted by Gin and Comics at 8:45 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

What an awful position you’re in, being physically unable to be pregnant and yet knowing exactly what pregnancy is like, and specifically what your girlfriend should do about hers! So many pregnant people experience complicated emotions about unplanned pregnancy and bodily autonomy, while you’re cursed with the absolute knowledge of what’s best for all pregnancies, if only everyone would just listen to your penisfeels for a minute.

PENISFEELS

I'm going to be giggling all day.
posted by emjaybee at 9:13 AM on May 28, 2013 [14 favorites]

> "Most of the letters are completely made up, and/or so heavily edited that they might as well be."

Cary Tennis, in particular, always seems to get questions that for some MYSTERIOUS reason sound like they were written by Cary Tennis. It makes his advice column sound like a single, exceedingly long-winded monologue told by the world's most neurotic person.
posted by kyrademon at 9:32 AM on May 28, 2013 [5 favorites]

I stumbled across this blog two months ago, when this entry on was published, about a question that was sent to Dear Prudence. The question was about how to best gossip about and harass a possibly OCD co-worker, for the co-worker's "excessive" handwashing.

I sort of hate-read Dear Prudence, but I was satisfied with Emily Yoffe's answer. Still, I was a bit ragey after reading that question (fake or not), because it expressed a common nasty attitude about OCD sufferers. I googled to see if any other Prudence hate-reader had been pissed off by this question. Lo and behold, this blog entry, which satisfied THE LIVING HELL OUT OF ME.

So yeah I like this tumblr. This is a person after my own heart, and I almost wish I had thought of and executed this idea first.
posted by Coatlicue at 10:07 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Awesome blog. This is way beyond snark into righteous fury.

This one is probably my favorite. Though it missed the weirdest part of the letter... "Problem two is that on our wedding night, he broke his foot and couldn’t work as a result." Wtf is homeboy doing in the bedroom that he broke his foot on their wedding night? She should withhold sex from him out of general concern for his health instead.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:31 AM on May 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

I kinda want to make a sockpuppet that dispenses this sort of advice on Ask MeFi now.
posted by egypturnash at 11:20 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Pretty much every time I get an AskMe answer deleted it's because I've ventured into that territory, egypturnash
posted by ook at 11:42 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

"Candlelit dinner, sexy Batman costume, crossed fingers."

That would probably work on me, actually.
posted by Jilder at 12:07 PM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

This reminds me of the MeTa compendium of unexpected advice given on AskMeFi. Includes such classics as the fedora guy thread and the shawl thread.
posted by Cash4Lead at 12:34 PM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

I've read through almost all of this, and I've often checked on the original sources to compare answers. I have to say that, for biting snark with a soupcon of class, Miss Manners beats the attempted-snarkier answers every time.
posted by xingcat at 12:55 PM on May 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

Just another reminder that Miss Manners is a national treasure.
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:31 PM on May 28, 2013 [3 favorites]

This one is probably my favorite. Though it missed the weirdest part of the letter... "Problem two is that on our wedding night, he broke his foot and couldn’t work as a result." Wtf is homeboy doing in the bedroom that he broke his foot on their wedding night? She should withhold sex from him out of general concern for his health instead.

Totally seconded, dude sounds like he's in a depressive funk to me. Which doesn't mean he's off the hook for not being willing to work on the relationship at all, even a little bit, or that his wife should be obliged to stick around and make it work when it's not working. A kindly-meant divorce might be the wake-up call this dude needs to take steps to reclaim his life.
posted by subdee at 1:37 PM on May 28, 2013

I'm enjoying this, though I do think Miss Manners is more consistently entertaining.

That said, do I think most advice column answers should be prefaced with this:

This is the most interesting and important problem anyone has ever had...
posted by trip and a half at 4:30 PM on May 28, 2013

That said, do I think most advice column answers should be prefaced with this: This is the most interesting and important problem anyone has ever had...

Yeah, that's a great line.

I have to say, when I read the question from "Caught between creativity and conscience," my first thought was, wow that person sounds like fedora guy's soulmate.
posted by torticat at 5:19 PM on May 28, 2013

I thought that a lot of the responses were quite clever. And then I read the response to "Blind Writer"...

"Fap fap fap" has NEVER ceased to make me laugh until I wet myself.

Oooh, this was just what I needed after the day I had..


posted by sundrop at 6:42 PM on May 28, 2013

Awesome link by the way *slight derail* Torticat, I was just looking for fedora guy's original question the other day and can't find it. Don't suppose you'd have any ideas?
posted by Jubey at 2:24 AM on May 29, 2013

Jubey, it's here ...it was linked a few comments up. :)
posted by torticat at 1:58 PM on May 29, 2013