Comments on: Advice that’s worse than worthless?

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:22:06 +0000

The worst advice I’ve received was anything that urged me to wait for things to “work themselves out”.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:08:48 +0000

It’s a bad idea to date friends.

By: JD Harper

JD Harper — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 05:43:40 +0000

Oh, there’s so much bad advice. In my current living situation, I’m pretty much obligated to attend Sunday School at my local crazy fundamentalist Church.

The class rotates teachers every eight weeks, so at least we get to try different flavors of crazy. One session, we learned that there’s no such thing as addiction; instead, we should use the term that the Bible refers to, “Life Dominating Sins.”

(Note: This term does not actually appear in the Bible.)

Before that we had a guy tell us that we shouldn’t use birth control because we should trust God to provide for us. His goal is to “out-breed the liberals.” (Because Jesus is a conservative, natch.)

Ironically, he was preaching to the college and career class, an exclusively unmarried audience.

But I’ll say this for the man: He practices what he preaches. He’s got eight kids. (This makes his family the second biggest in the church, behind the family with *twelve* kids.)

It would be entertaining if it wasn’t so infuriating. And sad.

By: Phire

Phire — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 05:03:56 +0000

@BitterOldPunk:

hahahahaha… hahah… hah. Yeah. My high school counselor, an amazing man in every other respect, tried to convince me that the “Arts and Business” arts degree at University X was just as valuable as the “Bachelor of Commerce” degree at University Y. He meant the best and wanted me to pursue my interest, but I’m really not sure how many career options would’ve been available to me post-graduation with an sociology degree other than in Academia.

As for the actual question: A lot of knee-jerk AskMe “DTMFAs” I find to be fairly, well, worthless. I suppose in some cases it’s the right action, and in certain cases it’s the only sane action, but a throw-away one liner with five letters? Really?

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:23:56 +0000

dbl: the former, unfortunately.

By: Saffron

Saffron — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:06:29 +0000

Woah, dbl, you kinda sorta totally did end up trolling in that thread you linked to. You may be right, but just throwing out “oh yeah and breadfeeding too!!!” is a little trolly. And you used the work troll, to put it fresh in people’s heads.

Of course, I feel pretty icky about the person’s comment who is all “not breastfeeding is a choice, similar to deciding to smoke around your baby”.

I almost want to say that anybody’s advice about babies, other than your doctor’s, may be not worth listening to. People are crazy about those things. I mean, I don’t have any babies, so what do I know. Don’t take my advice.

By: dbl

dbl — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:30:10 +0000

@BitterOldPunk:

So do you speak from years of depressing and soul-deadening life experience, or are you an enlightened engineer looking down on the English and German History majors?

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:00:25 +0000

“A liberal arts education is as valuable in the marketplace as a technical degree.”

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

By: dbl

dbl — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:23:16 +0000

This Entire Thread. My god. Horrible, HORRIBLE advice. Co-sleeping? Ferber? It’s a two week old!! You’re not going to sleep! Wait three months, and then talk to me.

By: angelique.eek

angelique.eek — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:09:25 +0000

“Yes you should eat that, I’m sure it’s totally fine.”

By: Marie Mon Dieu

Marie Mon Dieu — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:36:05 +0000

“Bangs will look great on you!” from a hairdresser.

They did not look great. I looked like a poodle. Then I got my hair caught in a curling iron trying to straighten them.