Bad Advice

What makes it bad, and what to say instead

As many of you are doubtlessly aware, I am an advice columnist. My road to this position was convoluted and largely unintentional. But regardless of the how or the why, I’ve been doing it for around six years now. As such, I’ve doled out and received my fair share of counsel, both wise and… otherwise. 

Today, for fun (I am fun), I want to delve into the latter category and share with you, my precious premium subscribers, some bad advice I’ve heard in my time in this profession. Not only that, but I’ll also tell you why it’s bad, and even offer you a better alternative. Because I’m just that nice of a guy, and because I want to key you into my process for writing my letters. Maybe you’ll find something useful to employ in your own capacity as an advice-giver, which we all end up being to some extent. 

But first, we have to define “bad advice,” which is a bit tricky. Most pieces of advice have their applications. Let’s walk through a polarizing example together: “Never give up,” or its American schoolyard variant, “don’t be a quitter.” 

Now me, I love to quit. Quitting is a drug. Quitting is a lover. Quitting is the air in my lungs, the sun in my sky. Some of the happiest moments in my life have been moments when I’ve quit, be it a job or a slog of a book or a hobby I didn’t quite take to. But that’s neither here nor there. What’s relevant here is the question: Is it good or bad advice to tell someone they shouldn’t give up?

A wise person would obviously say, “it depends.” That’s the game of advice-giving, much of which boils down to a matter of finding the maximally appropriate thing to say. There are occasions when it’s appropriate to quit, and times when it’s better to persevere. There are situations where it’s appropriate to push to a point, but no further, and situations where it comes down to risk vs. reward. 

So you can see how unfair it is to judge adages in this way, adages being rigid truisms that brook no argument. If they were as innately true as they present themselves to be, they wouldn’t contradict each other so often. Two heads are better than one, but also, if you want something done right, you’ve gotta do it yourself. Seek and ye shall find, but also, curiosity killed the cat. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but also… 

Well, let’s just say there is a prominent example of a society that would have benefited greatly from doing so. It would have really, really benefitted. 

You get the picture. Advice is maybe 10% knowledge, 90% wisdom. Wisdom is sort of like knowledge’s fun, gay sibling. Knowledge is for nerds, wisdom is for warlocks. It’s an art, not a science, though part of an advice columnist’s job is presenting their opinion with enough bluster that it reads as fact. 

Knowing that advice boils down to discernment, to identifying the most appropriate thing to say when presented with a situation, let’s acknowledge that even “bad advice” has its place, that, naturally, no piece of advice will reliably find its mark in every scenario. Advice is only really bad if it doesn’t suit the situation.

With all that established, let’s make fun of some aphorisms. 

Live Each Day Like It’s Your Last 

Poor thing. It’s not that it’s wrong, it just has terrible PR. It’s the kind of slogan you saw everywhere on Facebook in 2012, serving as the caption beneath a millennial’s selfie (tongue sticking out, flipping the bird at the camera). Its most prominent, recent iteration is YOLO (You Only Live Once), which is like “Carpe Diem” wearing a pair of those plastic shutter sunglasses that once dominated college fraternities.

In the end, it’s just not very practical. For me, to live each day as if it were my last would be to live in existential horror, which I guess I kind of already do, but it’s a condition I am able to mitigate with things like “watching anime” and “online shopping,” things I wouldn’t do if I thought I was going to perish tomorrow. 

Better advice: Practice being present. 

Get a Revenge Body

This one was sent my way after a breakup, and I still don’t understand why. The body I’m in is perfectly capable of exacting revenge. 

I don’t think people who are freshly out of a relationship want to hear that they need to hit the gym. It’s also a strange thing to hear from a friend or acquaintance. Do you have other opinions about my body you’d like to share? Choose your words carefully, as I am about to enter an intense training arc, one that will triple my strength and my resolve to destroy any who have ever wronged me.

Better advice: Now is a great time to focus on yourself.