#BAD ADVICE

[hyperlexichypatia]

Okay, here's my criticism of this post I keep seeing -- and no, it's not what you think. I know, my longtime followers who know the kinds of things I post about a lot are probably thinking, "Oh, I know what their objection is going to be. It's going to be that 18-19 year olds are adults who can date older partners if they choose to." But no, that's not it this time! Yes, I do believe it's fine for young adults to date older adults if they choose to (and am accordingly rolling my eyes at all the "This should go up to 25!" comments in the notes), but. That's not my issue here. In fact, precisely because I believe that young adults dating older adults is morally neutral, I'm not at all concerned about the efficacy of the messaging against it. My concern is that underage minors being in sexual/romantic relationships with adults is actually harmful and dangerous, and therefore young people actually should be warned against it, and this is not an effective warning.

Fellow old people, do y'all remember being 14? At all? Would you have found this warning effective and compelling at that age?

I for sure would not! I did not! Quite the opposite!

Put yourself in the young person's position here. You have no rights. You're treated as someone with no agency. Your parents, teachers, government, and society as a whole treats you as some combination of "nuisance," "ticking time bomb," and "unthinking blob." Developmentally, you're at a phase of life when you should be transitioning to a more adult role, but everyone around you demonizes you for that desire. All your thoughts, feelings, and opinions are dismissed as the inconsequential ravings of Just A Dumb Kid Who Doesn't Know Any Better. You meet someone who treats you with basic human politeness, tells you that he likes you and that you're mature, actually treats you like you have two brain cells to rub together. Of course you're going to be drawn to him. And then when other adults warn you that obviously of course he doesn't really like you, that's impossible, of course you're not really mature, no one could possibly see you that way; actually you're naive and incapable of making your own decisions, and the way your parents/teachers/society treat you is completely justified. Are you going to heed those warnings?

Why are adults absolutely constitutionally incapable of giving good, necessary advice to teenagers without fucking insulting them in the process? Of course teenagers don't listen to it! Why would anyone??

"Oh, well, of course teenagers don't listen, because they're stubborn, and immature, and biologically determined to make bad decisions, which is all the more reason they need to be controlled," say adults, completely oblivious to the actual problem.

When I was a teenager, the big moral panic at the time was teen pregnancy, and we were all inundated with the least effective cautionary tales in the world: "If you get pregnant as a teen, you'll have to leave your parents' care and function as an adult!" Which left every girl who'd intentionally gotten pregnant for the explicit purpose of escaping her abusive parents saying "Yeah, that was the goal." And every girl who was looking for a way of escaping her abusive parents to think "What a great idea!" Today the big moral panic is older partners, but if the appeal of an older partner is that he treats you like someone capable of making your own decisions, why would you be persuaded by a counterargument of "Don't listen to him, of course you're not capable of making your own decisions!"?

Again. I'm saying this because I agree that adults dating minors is a bad thing and that minors should be warned against it. EFFECTIVELY.

That said, this is my advice to any 17-or-younger person being pursued by an 18+-year-old partner: Listen. You deserve so much better than the way society treats you. You deserve to be taken seriously. You deserve to make your own decisions in life. You have a mind of your own, and people should recognize that instead of treating your pesky "free will" as a personal affront or an inconvenient glitch. You can and should think for yourself. You deserve, and I hope you have, relationships with older people who validate those truths about you. However. You are still legally and materially powerless. I don't have to tell you that. You live it every day. Someone older than you -- and therefore, inherently, legally, more powerful than you -- should not be trying to extract things from you. Money, sex, unpaid labor, anything of value. Someone more powerful than you who truly values you, values your friendship, values you as a person, will be mindful of your status and not try to extract anything from you. Cross-age friendships are good. Older people can and should genuinely like and appreciate you, and you can and should genuinely like and appreciate them. But if they try to extract anything from you, run away.

[thatbadadvice]

Help! I Just Got Identified As An Absolute Creepo Rip-Off Artist!

The Bad Advisor deals with a lot of Wrong Shit; it's pretty much what I do here! Bad Advice trades in People being Wrong, and doing Wrong Stuff. But the most consistently Wrong-est thing that the Bad Advisor has dealt with on this blog lo these 11 (!) years of Bad Advice is the wholly incorrect perception that Neil Gaiman is its author.

I used to find this flattering, even charming, because Neil's fans (among which I counted myself since I started reading the Sandman series in the late 90s) incorrectly perceived his reposts as evidence that this blog was his work, not mine.

This blog is not now, and has never been, the work of Neil Gaiman.

It feels weird to spell it out, but also necessary. Occasionally I have responded to some posters who thought I was Gaiman (there truly have been too many over the years to respond to all of them). But Neil never did so, even in comments on his reposts that praised him for being the Bad Advisor, which he surely knew he was not.

Backstory: the Bad Advisor posted her first Bad Advice almost exactly 11 years ago today. In ensuing years, Bad Advice Nation has been a space of camaraderie and education and mutual support. The Bad Advisor herself (me, Andrea, the person writing this post) has generally shied away from affirmative self-identification; it was more interesting, I thought, to let the Bad Advisor exist as an idea rather than as an individual, even as Bad Advice existed elsewhere (RIP The Establishment) and was in some places attributed to my government name.

One of the first champions of Bad Advice, and arguably the reason Bad Advice originally went viral and garnered the audience it has, is because the sci-fi/fantasy author Neil Gaiman often reposted the blog. I was, initially and at length, flattered and enthused by Neil Gaiman's attention, because I was a near life-long fan of his creations, and thought that his affinity for my writing signaled something important about my talent and creative capacity.

Years ago, because Gaiman knew I was the Bad Advisor, Gaiman even invited me to meet him -- and then failed to deliver on that invite. I wrote it off at the time as a bummer but inevitable experience with fame.

I now suspect I dodged a bullet, knowing what we know about Neil Gaiman's predatory behavior toward women younger than him.

I posted a Bluesky Thread about this whole shebang, and the tl;dr is that it now seems obvious to me that Gaiman would never have even thought to correct posters who attributed my work to him, or credit me my for Bad Advice work, even when he knew people wrongly perceived him as being the Bad Advisor.

Neil Gaiman does not appreciate, celebrate, or lift up women's writing and intellectual work, despite his ill-earned reputation as a feminist man. If you love Sandman, as I once did, the Bad Advisor implores you to avail yourself of the work of Tanith Lee, who Gaiman never credited as inspiration for the story.

It's hard to have heroes. Some of them will fail us, inevitably. We are all broken, fallible people who will fuck up now and again. Some harms are beyond repair, while some harms bring us closer to each other as we persevere through them, together.

But we do not need to entertain fuckery.

Do not entertain fuckery.

Signed, The Bad Advisor (Andrea Grimes, not Neil Gaiman)

[ky-landfill]

[truly-terrible-advice]

Steal the Declaration of Independence.

[good-advice-ganondorf]

Can you give me some bad advice?

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

The worst advice I’ve been given as a neurodivergent…

Mollys ADHD Mayhem

[cardinalcyn]

terrible life advice

you don't get context. that IS the context

[sweetteaanddragons]

B2MEM - Court

@spring-into-arda (249 words)

Elrond did not, as a general rule, ask Lauriel for advice. No one had ever felt the need to question him on the whys of this.

However, with the shores of the Blessed Lands drawing ever closer, and the threat of possibly being expected to present himself before the court of Tirion, at the very least, becoming ever more of a reality, he found himself facing a hint of an old anxiety, of a kind he hadn’t felt since the very beginning of the Second Age.

“You have mentioned your time at Tirion before,” he said cautiously as she took up her customary place beside him by the railing of the ship. “Were you ever at the court there?”

“Oh, yes! Prince Maglor was kind enough to arrange for me to play at more than one party there . . . I wonder how things have changed.”

There was that, of course. All of their knowledge would be outdated by now.

“Have you asked him about it?” she asked cheerfully.

Elrond grimaced. “He was in an odd mood,” he said. “He said he could give me excellent advice for starting fights.”

“ . . . Lady Galadriel?” she asked with a hesitation more suitable to suggest inquiring of a Balrog.

“She quarreled with him over the best way to start fights.”

“Ah.” She bit her lip. “I can give you advice on how to not start a fight when you’re caught cheating at cards?”

Well. The advice was, at least, progressing vaguely in the right direction.

[bitchesgetriches]

Let’s End This Damaging Misconception About Credit Cards

I don’t know who started the rumor that carrying a balance on credit cards is good for your credit score, but I hope they step on a lego in bare feet every day for the rest of their lives.

Of all the damaging misconceptions about personal finance we’ve had to correct over the course of running Bitches Get Riches, this is by far my least favorite. And it keeps popping up again and again in questions from our followers! Why? How? Who is teaching all of our darling kangaroo babies such a terrible way of handling their credit cards?

Until I can find the culprit and give them their just desserts (hot oil? The rack?), I have made it my mission to set the record straight.

Keep reading.

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[rosieandthemoon]

Stop listening to big scoliosis™️. Sitting in shrimp position all day at your desk IS good for you, and eventually you’ll start seeing new (shrimp) colors.

[weirdyearbook]

Source details and larger version.

Seeing in the dark: a collection of vintage night photography.

[truly-terrible-advice]

If Nietzsche was right and God is dead, we have a limited time to harvest the organs.

[good-advice-ganondorf]

Okay, that one was good. Could you give us, your loyal audience, some more bad advice?

Please?

[ajmonarch]

I see a lot of writer problems, I chuckle over a lot of writer problems... Yet I can relate to very few of those writer problems. And I suddenly realised:

Maybe there are so many writer problems cause we take advice from writers who have those problems?

Not the writers who don't... Who, granted, are chuckling and silently scrolling. But you know there's that whole thing about not taking advice from someone who isn't where you want to be... Yep. End of thought.