Dear Advice Column: Why Do We Love You So Much?
fascination with a stranger’s dilemmas and directions
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I love reading advice columns.
At first I thought it was because I like gossip, but it’s more than that. It’s reassuring to read other people’s conundrums that are vexing enough to seek external advice, but not so immediate that they can’t wait a little while to hear back.
When I procrastinate by scrolling social media, my algorithm knows what I’m hungry for. I’ve come close many times to shelling out $15 to access Slate Plus, where I’d be able to read Dear Prudence to my heart’s content—and my productivity’s malcontent. I’ve taken to clicking on links for random advice columns, unconcerned with whose name comes after “Dear,” even on topics that don’t apply to me, like parenting or investing or navigating crappy in-laws (my Henry family in-laws are actually great).
Ever the scholar, I did some advice column research, and it turns out I’m not alone in my taste for this odd genre.
When Did They Start?
Dr. Elyse Vigiletti is a print culture researcher who, like me, likes advice columns. In her interview with Alison Green, columnist for “Ask A Manager,” Vigiletti sheds some light on the long-standing popularity of advice columns. The format of advice columns, Vigiletti says, “has been remarkably stable over the last 300 years — readers send in questions and columnists respond, with direct instructions, with straightforward answers to questions, or by using the question as a launch point for a philosophical treatise.” This focus on the philosophical responses is key in our current digital age where folks can simply Google answers, and has led to what Vigiletti identifies as advice columns’ “own subgenres and vocabularies.”
Why Do We Like Them So Much?
Media Psychologist Pamela Rutledge suggests that our interest in advice columns extends beyond a voyeuristic peek into other people’s drama, and is “rooted in something deeper: a hardwired penchant for social connection.” When we read an advice column about someone else’s challenges, even if we don’t share the same problem, the column may leave what Rutledge calls “an imprint over time,” offering us space for introspection.
Dr. Vigiletti shares an interesting reflection on the layered relationship of advice columns: “The advice columnist–reader relationship is strange [….] It’s an intimate, personal conversation for a large, remarkably loyal, yet invisible audience in which one party is simultaneously a participant, moderator, and expert consultant in the discussion.”
This concept of social connection is amplified in advice columns that feature crowdsourcing. AITA, which stands for “Am I the Asshole?,” is a popular thread on Reddit started by Marc Beaulac in 2013. The purpose of AITA is for people to share a summary of their interpersonal conflicts and seek feedback from fellow Redditers. After sharing what happened and why the people in their story were upset with them, commenters reply on whether or not their behavior was in the wrong, assigning them the stamp YTA (you’re the asshole) or validating that they were in fact NTA (not the asshole). AITA posts typically focus on overstepped boundaries, taking responsibility, or interpersonal conflict, like “AITA for not wanting my older sister as a bridesmaid?” or “AITA for questioning if my husband gave me a fake Gucci bag?”
Why Do We Care What a Stranger Says?
Clinical Psychologist Michaela Thomas reminds us that it can be “problematic to read advice columns if we become too attached to following the advice to the letter, instead of taking the bits which work for our own situation and flexibly leaving the rest.” It’s important to remember that the advice column writer is only one person, and we should adapt the advice to our own lived experience.
As an avid advice column consumer, I know that columnists vary in ethos, expertise, and lived experience. Someone writing into a “Dear So-and-So” advice column with a question about etiquette for mowing their lawn is different from someone submitting a question to their medical doctor in a private patient portal is different from someone seeking validation on a wedding party snafu on AITA.
I run a monthly Q&A column here on Substack and invite folks to submit questions on topics I research and publish about, have lived experience with, or hobbies I enjoy. I welcome questions on productivity, slow living, chronic illness, alt-ac paths after the PhD, sobriety, slow fashion, creativity, etc.
Do you have a question for my monthly Q&A column? Ask it here!
I don’t expect my newsletter subscribers to ask me questions about my PhD research focus (Lisa Ben’s use of music and zines as a way to undermine anti-homosexual discourse circulation in Los Angeles in 1940-1960), but for those as curious about niche research topics as I am, next week’s newsletter will be a special treat!
Good Starter Advice Columns
¡Hola Papi!: LGBTQ+ advice column by
Handy Ma’am Hotline: Mercury Stardust answers questions about all things DIY and home improvement
- : Anne Helen Petersen features guest experts who answer reader questions on a variety of topics
- : Business owners and answer reader questions (both hosts live with chronic health conditions and reader questions are often related to this).
If you have an advice column recommendation, please share it with me via a comment or an email!
Take good care,
Dr. Kate
OK WHAT, your PhD research sounds AMAZING!! What field were you working in? When I was doing my MFA in creative writing, I had the opportunity to take an undergrad class in queer theory as an elective, which I’d been studying independently for years, and I was so excited to do my little research paper.
I'm guessing you know about Dear Sugar and the book, Tiny Little Things, by Cheryl Strayed. MUST READ. ♥️ I always enjoy the "advice column" in Real Simple. Then, of course, I remember the random newspaper clippings taped to the fridge through the years from Dear Abby.