
'Help! I can't stop reading advice columns, even though I know the questions are fake!'
Why there are so many advice columns, why they're full of fake letters, and why advice from Ben Dreyfuss is better than what's out there. Plus: Ben and Josh answer your mail.
Dear readers,
This week’s episode of the Very Serious podcast is extremely fun — I think you will really enjoy it.
Most of you are aware that about once a week, I’ll answer questions from readers in this newsletter — what we call the Mayonnaise Clinic. Sometimes I get questions about politics and policy and my opinions, but sometimes the questioners are seeking advice, which I’m happy to give.
My friend Ben Dreyfuss, author of the recently rebranded “Calm Down” newsletter on Substack, has been getting into the advice business himself, taking the questions from popular advice columns and offering his own blunter, funnier, better advice.
I invited Ben on the podcast to talk about the advice column as a format, and the perverse incentives that lead publications to run questions everyone knows are fake. And Ben and I considered some letters together — advising a reader on how he should meet people while living in a really lame suburb; counseling a woman in a six-year relationship who clearly isn’t being taken seriously by her boyfriend or his parents; and helping out a guy who doesn’t feel respected by his mentor and predecessor in a high-profile job.
I hope you really enjoy the episode, and if you have any questions you’d like answered in the future, either in a forthcoming edition of the Mayonnaise Clinic or on another advice-column-as-podcast episode, I encourage you to send them to mayo@joshbarro.com.
Best,
Josh
Episode links and references
Click here for a transcript of this episode.
Here’s Ben’s Substack, which is now called Calm Down.
Here’s his first advice column, where he answered a few letters submitted to the New York Times, including the father writing in about finding a box of unopened condoms under his son’s bed.
And here’s his latest one, where he answered the letter about the botched wedding invitation and bad feelings about it; and the one about the longtime girlfriend invited to pay her own way on her wealthy boyfriend’s family’s vacation.
Bennett Madison in Gawker: ‘Help! I Couldn’t Stop Writing Fake Dear Prudence Letters That Got Published’
From the Mayonnaise Clinic:
I recently answered several questions about food and cooking: how I find recipes, the essentials that are always in my kitchen, and the meals I keep in rotation.
And I wrote a follow-up issue where I answered a question about whether I only cook “white people food.”
Here’s another recent issue where I answered a question from a reader who wants to return to his local gay men’s chorus but doesn’t appreciate their continued requirement for masks at rehearsal.
And from a few months ago, I advised a woman whose long-term romantic partner rejects COVID vaccines, about how she should handle both him and her friends who think she should break up with him.
'Help! I can't stop reading advice columns, even though I know the questions are fake!'
Hey Josh. Thank you (as well as Ben and Sara) for answering my question! First, I wanted to tell you I was laughing my ass off during that segment. You guys got a frighteningly accurate read of my personality, because I am a total social butterfly who loves going to bars solo and talking to whoever happens to be seated next to me. Also the jokes about Tysons itself were hilarious.
Second, I genuinely appreciate the advice given. It’s reaffirmed what I think I already knew, which is that I need to be committing to making the effort. Since I wrote in I’ve been spending more time in Arlington and the District itself, and I’ll definitely be keeping that up.
Thanks again!
"Boyfriend" sounds like you are in high school, "partner" sounds like you are in the same law firm; "lover" sounds like you are having an affair with a married man from a 19th century novel.
There is only one language I know of that has solved this problem. In Italy they downgraded "fiance" instead of upgrading "boyfriend." I'm told the reason is that in Olden Times if a young man went out somewhere with a woman he wasn't married to the convention was to lie and say you were engaged. So there if you are dating somebody you call that person your fiance, which is an adult word. (If you are actually engaged they have a different expression.)