You know, like “always split on 18,” or “having kids is the most rewarding thing you can do in life.”

What’s that one bit of advice you got from a trusted friend that you know deep, deep down would just ruin your thing?

  • Lvxferre
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    fedilink
    268 months ago

    The Venn diagram for “advice” and “bad advice” is almost a perfect circle. In general, advice is only good if three conditions are met:

    1. it was requested or at least clearly implied to be welcome.
    2. it’s given under a solid grasp of the situation, or after some serious thought.
    3. it’s not assumptive in nature. And, if generalising, it takes into account that generalisations fail.

    Those sayings - like in the OP - almost always violate #2 and #3. And usually #1, as it’s that sort of thing that people vomit on your face when they’re really, really eager to treat you like cattle to be herded.


    Okay… example. Right. Acquaintance of mine saying that I should work with computers - because I use Linux, because I can recover a password, because I can spend ten minutes (I’m not exaggerating) trying to parse what he’s asking help with. Under that “if u like it than make it you’re job! lol” approach.

    Yeah… nah.