Kids today are beyond your middle-aged categorization.
He's liberated where it counts the most.
Is this like the difference between a leaky roof and a leaking roof? As in, your house only has a leaking roof when it's raining, but it has a leaky roof at all times.
Maybe he means he's only gay in bed but he's gay-ey all the time.
I think that's exactly it, if the reason the roof had a leak was because it was unwilling to make a public commitment to a specific shingle.
"Better put the buckets out, I'm gaying tonight"
He doesn't want to emotionally cheat on his asexual girlfriend and the letter writer needs to respect that.
I hope when she answers questions like this, there's a certificate she gives you. Something like, "Mallory Ortberg says I'm right about our relationship issue."
He doesn't want to emotionally cheat on his asexual girlfriend and the letter writer needs to respect that.
It'd work if he had an unemotional boyfriend to match the asexual girlfriend.
7.last is almost enough to make me want to get into a relationship, but it would still be a bad idea.
1: I was thinking he sounds like a middle-aged Republican politician.
I've felt mixed about Ortberg's advice, which I suppose is a good way to keep me interested. She gives a strong opinion and isn't afraid to side against her letter writer, so that's good. But sometimes I think she's pretty absolutest. Mostly I suspect that I am being out-liberal'd. That's good for me, if a little bracing.
I love the letter on the next page where some selfish twat wants to leave his children with his second spouse and go and live by himself for a year because he hasn't had the chance up till now! Adorbs!
Oh, yikes, asilon. I hadn't turned the page. Wow is that plan jarringly familiar. Ugh.
My favorite was when she told someone they could steal a dog.
15 - yes, leaving your kids with their other parent and fucking off to find oneself is fairly popular, sadly. (Although luckily for the kids they tend to get left with the good parent!) Leaving your kids with their step-parent is a new level of entitlement I feel.
I really shouldn't rant about this yet but just yesterday I got a message about how hurt she is that I still have never sat down with her to congratulate her on her good intentions to keep the family together by having date night once a week and one-on-one time with the girls on other unspecified nights and then being out on her own the rest of the time because my response to that plan was that good, it sounded like she was thinking about a custody plan and we could work out the rest of it since there was no way on earth we'd stay together as a couple. This is of course because I'm bitter and a bad person.
some selfish twat wants to leave his children with his second spouse and go and live by himself for a year because he hasn't had the chance up till now!
Join the army, son, they'll give you all the opportunities to do it that you could wish for.
Except not so much the "by himself" part, I suppose. But, anecdotally, you get a lot more sleep in a FOB in Afghanistan than at home with your four-month-old child.
Dear Prudence,
I've been married all of my adult life, no one has ever had more beautiful children. However, to be frank, they're pretty useless, and I find myself struggling to justify the expense. Honestly, the old ball and chain's a bit past her sell-by as well. A gas powered chainsaw is $242.99 at Home Depot, and we've got loads of lye in the garage. Would either of these be tax-deductible?
The guy who wants to leave to have time on his own in 14 is a gay guy who had been married with kids and then dove into the relationship with the second spouse, which is why Ortberg ties herself into knots instead of just saying "fuck this worthless excuse for a parent."
I find her advice mediocre and the column boring, which is so lame since she invented pretty much her own, incredible form of absurdist humor that she now doesn't use.
18 - ffs. The only possible responses are silence, or "oh do fuck off dear".
22 was confusingly written. He'd been married and presumptively closered and then jumped right into a new committed relationship with a man, and wants tonleave the kids with the stepdad.
13 yeaaahhh this is part of a trend of some of my favorite internet writers (her, Havrilesky) becoming pretty mediocre advice columnists for... why? This may just be sour grapes; I actually wrote (for) an advice column in another life and while I like to think I avoided the pitfalls I sneer at... you know what, I did, I speak from a place of unquestionable moral superiority here.
Only gay in bed is amazing though, and even more amazing is the number of people Only Gay in Bed has gotten to cooperate with him.
"I still have never sat down with her to congratulate her on her good intentions" is not even a complaint we need ever accept, not even from someone who had behaved much better than Lee.
23, 26: There was no danger I would fall for any of that, to be clear. That's why it's still such a pressing concern for her 1.25 years later or whatever it is now.
I also relatively enjoyed the toast but can't muster myself to read her advice column. I loved Emily Yoffe--she reminded of my advisor, who reminds me of the slightly un-PC middle aged Jewish aunt I never had. Even if Yoffe seemed really wrong, it was part of a general overall advice giving persona that was a recognizable type, whereas Ortberg is a single (?) childless 20-something, so it's harder to read her bad advice as anything but inexperience.
I did enjoy the mustache article though, in addition to the gay in bed one.
...becoming pretty mediocre advice columnists for... why?
Food and shelter, surely.
Advice columnists 100 years ago: People with no worldly experience whose teachings are based purely on moral principles (religion)
Advice columnists 50 years ago: People with some experience whose teachings are somewhat useful (random middle-aged women)
Advice columnists now: People with no worldly experience whose teachings are based purely on moral principles (liberalism)
Well, her advice column is better than previous Dear Prudence, so there's that - old Prudence was pretty ignorant about trans people, for one thing, and had zero interest in learning anything because that would have interfered with the advice-givin'. Also new Prudence makes fewer awful jokes and seems less embarrassed about sex.
All in all, though, Captain Awkward is the best place to go for left-leaning internet orthodoxy - the advice is often pretty decent and the "you are a terrible person if you think otherwise" consensus is the strongest and most resilient that I've ever encountered.
31.2 Captain Awkward looks great. Thanks for that suggestion. I do like Mallory but that's more because I just like her humor and sensibility. I agree with some of the criticisms here.
I read Captain Awkward from time to time.The frequency with which the advice is essentially "Put yourself first" feels shocking. Not wrong, necessarily, but surprising. DTMFA, except for all your family and social connections, too!
Also a fan of Captain Awkward. I don't know if it's advice I would have actually listened to in my teens, but it's frequently the kind of advice I needed to hear.
he claims that he's only "gay in bed"
I DON'T SEE WHY THIS IS SO CONTROVERSIAL
I like Ortberg as Dear Prudence, largely because she's so much better than Yoffe, especially on sexual issues. She's also willing to be quite blunt when the answer is very obvious, which is often the case. It is admittedly weird to see her offering advice to people who are clearly much older than her, and her advice is obviously a lot less reliable in those cases.
36 I dunno the, bluntness baffles me especially in relationship questions. If "figure out what you want, communicate what you want, then maybe break up" (or "just break up") were things people could just DO, wouldn't they? I can be blinkered on this and assume people engage in the deranged levels of self-reflection I do such and maybe "figure out/communicate what you want" is useful to some people but still. It's entertaining to see people get semi-told off but cheap thrills.
It's sort of what puzzles me about advice columns/columnists. Where is their allegience? Is it to the letter writer, is that like, their client? Is it to their audience (there's always some of that)? Is it to some theory of morality/psychology/whatever that they hold in their hearts? I think both Ortberg and Havrilesky have sort of chosen the latter path and their worldviews are just entirely unrecognizable to me so I read wistfully, thinking why are you wasting your beautiful mind on furthering nonsense (she said, in blog comments)?
It's also a crazy easy kind of writing, and I (unfairly) believe it to be a copout in most instances.
why are you wasting your beautiful mind on furthering nonsense (she said, in blog comments)?
Sigh mouseover text sigh
If somebody subscribes to the part of Slate you have to pay money to see (and is willing to admit it here), let me know what she said about to the wife who wants to tell her husband she used to be a stripper. I'm hoping for the standard writing advice of "don't tell, show."
39 Honestly though that last sentence was snide and not a reflection of how I feel and I fully take it back, time machine.
wait no I only take back the part in the dog balls i mean parens
Hey Mobes (or anyone else) what should I do with 3-4 hours in downtown Omaha?
43 get high be mean to a cat
That plus maybe a nice lunch. I don't know the good places anymore.
If you don't have a whole week, you'll never see it all.
Can someone make a seedy-part-of-town paleo joke? I'm busy trying to finish my overdue Tooze summary.
Steak houses are kind of a thing there.
44 booked and calendared. Eat shit Nebraska cats!
Warren Buffet would say to go to Gorat's, but that's not really downtown.
I feel like people need to use more commas today.
Be, the change, you want to see, in the world.
Anyway, the Old Market is downtown. It's your usual warehouse district gentrified into a dining and cultural district thing.
I can be blinkered on this and assume people engage in the deranged levels of self-reflection I do such and maybe "figure out/communicate what you want" is useful to some people but still.
I think it is often useful advice, not actually because it's something most people are going to be able to do in most situations -- as you say, it's obvious enough that if there weren't an obstacle, it would have happened already -- but that having to focus on why you're not just doing the obvious gets you looking at that obstacle, which is maybe the problem that can be fixed. If that makes any sense.
As near as I can tell, intentionally trying to be self-reflective is close to useless. It either hits you or it doesn't.
54 sounds right, I guess the advice columns I'm getting het up about don't push on "why the [querant] is not just doing the obvious" in a way that seems useful or illuminating or accurate.
In any relations, you need to be very clear when communicating your needs.
I think I react especially strongly to all the "maybe get a divorce" advice because duh you have to be buffeted distress and confusion for years, during which any ostensibly "no-nonsense advice" is simply churned into more misery, then suddenly you are divorced and you are not totally sure how. This is an objective description of everyone's process.
I was going to argue, but yeah, that's pretty close.
Based on reading DWIL threads, there seems to usually be a lot unsaid in the initial query, often minimizing other issues. Follow-up questions help draw those out and give actually helpful guidance. So the traditional-format advice column is best seen as entertainment.
(I like that Ortberg at least fairly frequently says "You haven't given me much information on...")
Yeah, I guess Ortberg seems relatively aware of her own limitations and the format's which like, I mean, why do it then, how well can it really pay? Or just totally reinvent it, you are smart enough. She was churning out very orignal stuff at an insane rate for a long time, I guess I don't begrudge her a relatively easy gig, but can't we just give her a pile of gold as thanks and not make her degrade herself? It's Havrilesky I'm worried about/find somewhat pernicious from a place of love.
Anyway the One True Edith has already said everything there is to say.
Advice, on the other hand, is when you hear a description of someone else's problem and then tell the person something about yourself. Hopefully whatever you say is funny or interesting, but it has little to do with actually helping anyone. It may seem or feel like it does, but there are always more variables than we'll ever be able to see or understand, and best case scenario you're pressing on the problem a little bit in a way that engages the problem-haver.
30
Advice columnists 100 years ago: People with no worldly experience whose teachings are based purely on moral principles (religion)
In 1916? I kind of assume there would have been some Freudians in the business. If not, there should have been.
37
If "figure out what you want, communicate what you want, then maybe break up" (or "just break up") were things people could just DO, wouldn't they?
I assume it could be helpful to put the emphasis back on them. You see a lot of people asking questions about what they "should" do, but barring obvious practical or ethical concerns, what they should do depends on what they want - do they view a certain thing as unforgivable or not, would they be happier with partner A or partner B, etc. Presumably they're asking for advice because they're in the habit of it, or they don't want to bite the bullet and get the hard decision over with, or they haven't thought through the big picture in clear and stark terms yet. But a third party often can't just meaningfully tell someone what would make them happier, they need to make that decision for themselves.
Analogy time: AISIMHB, I spend a lot of time playing World of Warcraft, and a lot of time on Reddit. On the WoW Reddit community, literally several times a day there's someone asking "what class should I play?" and 90 percent of the time, the answer includes "play what you find most fun, different people like different classes."
Dorothy Dix got started in 1896. Was she especially religious?
But the correct answer is "ranger," right?
Havrilesky was fucking funny back when she wrote for Suck.
The fact that Ortberg now writes an advice column is a clear sign that the human race should be exterminated.
66.2 sounds like a reasonable way to engage in one on one conversation but a very dull, frustrating advice column. I dunno, the thrumming question under every question for me is "how do I know what I want plus is wanting things even real?" not "how can/should I get the thing I want?" This is INCREDIBLY frustrating to therapists IME.
They get paid to sit and listen to people. If it wasn't frustrating, everybody would want the job.
69 Havrilesky was also funny for a long time after that, the beginnings of her advice column were even funny/smart. She's still pretty good when talking about death, but the rest of it comes through the distortion of like, a cult for people who think they used therapy right? I dunno. It reminds me of myself when I first started doing 12-step stuff, but one of the mercies of that model is that it steers the newly self-rightous to basements full of very patient folks and away from national circulation.
72 cont. and honestly, fuck funny, even, I don't need her to be funny! She still comes up with super-incisive stuff like (from a recent column chosen at random) "http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/09/ask-polly-am-i-too-intense-to-have-close-friends.html""our culture treats awkwardness -- a transient, skin-deep, situational side effect -- as if it's a fundamental trait that defines a person" which is great on its own (even if "our culture" is a little sloppy) but it's harnessed for service in the weird cult.
i did a cool job embedding that link, whatever.