Advice on Facebook

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

These days you take your entertainment where you can find it.  Me, I’m always entertained when I see another installment of what I’ve come to call Barb vs. the Facebook advice givers.
 
Full disclosure: Barb Goffman is one of my best friends, and I showed her a draft of this blog before posting it, and I think she’s okay with it. Maybe she thinks if enough people read this it will solve her problem.

I’m not holding my breath.

Periodically, Barb will post on Facebook about something. Maybe a vent about something that has happened.  Maybe a humorous anecdote about how something went wrong. And a couple of dozen people will proceed to give her advice. Sometimes a lot more than that.

Only she’s not looking for advice. She just wants to vent, or share something funny, or whatever. So she’s started mentioning that she doesn’t need advice—she’s just sharing.  Or venting. Whatever.  She seems to think this disclaimer will squelch her fellow humans’ completely predictable and irresistible impulse to tell her what she should do.

And then the fun begins.

Fictitious example.

Post from Barb:

“Just venting—but I’m so annoyed! Last night the neighborhood vampires picked MY yard to party in—at least that’s what it sounded like. The hollow laughter was bad enough, but then one of their victims started screaming, and it kept me up half the night. And then it’s such a pain to clean up the bloodstains in the morning. No advice needed; just venting; I’ve already figured out how to solve the problem.”

You’d think that was pretty clear.  And yes, she’s hoping for a reaction. Just not the one she gets.

What she’s hoping for:
 “Oh, that’s so annoying. “
“Hugs, Barb—I don’t know what I’d do if I had to deal with that.”
“I know exactly how you feel—the vampires kept me up last night, too.”
“You think vampires are bad—I have werewolves in the woods behind my house. Forget sleeping when the moon is full.”
Or even “Wow, I have the same problem—what are you doing to solve it?”

What she gets instead:
“Try a white noise machine so you can’t hear them.”
“A white noise machine won’t work—try earplugs.  I use a special kind of earplugs that shuts out every bit of noise.  You can buy them here (link).”
“You need to plant garlic in your yard.”
“You should call the police on them—my county now has a special paranormal squad to deal with vampires—I’m sure your county must.”
“They can’t cross running water, so if you install a moat around your house, you’ll be safe—but you have to get something like a waterwheel to keep the water running.”
“Have you considered inviting them inside to discuss the problem?”
“No! She shouldn’t invite them inside! That’s how they get you!”

It’s usually at about this point in the ongoing circus that Barb calls me to complain that she wasn’t asking for advice—she was just venting.

Things don’t get any better when she asks for advice. Because yes, sometimes she asks for advice. Posting on Facebook is a great way to get a lot of information or opinions in a hurry.

You just need to be able to sort through something like this:

Barb: I’m looking for ways to repel the vampires from my yard. Anyone have a suggestion?

Person 1: I never get vampires in my yard. You must be imagining them.
Person 2: Don’t be lazy. If you’d just Google “repel vampires” you could find this out for yourself.
Person 3: Plant a lot of garlic
Person 4: Have you tried planting garlic?
Person 5: I find that hanging a lot of silver charms from the trees keeps the werewolves out. Maybe you could try that.
Person 5: She has vampires, not werewolves. Barb, try the garlic. It worked great for me, and I know at least a dozen people who’ve found it works perfectly.
Person 6: If you’d taken my advice about the moat, you wouldn’t have this problem.

At this point, having received several recommendations for garlic, including one from someone who has had a personal success with it, Barb uses a link someone provided to an garden website that has good prices on garlic and thanks everyone.  She figures people will read the comments—including her thanks--realize the problem has been solved, and relax.

But no. She gets more advice. Multiple recommendations for garlic. One person who claims garlic didn’t work for him, and then comes back later and apologizes, because he made the mistake of substituting avocado toast for garlic and only later realized that wouldn’t work. More advice on repelling werewolves, along with mummies, witches, trolls, brownies, gremlins, and rogue leprechauns. More people who deny the existence of vampires. An offer from some guy named Vladimir Tepes to come over and exorcise the vampires from her house—at least that what the Romanian-to-English translation site suggests he’s offering.

She edits the original post so it now reads:

Barb: I’m looking for ways to repel the vampires from my yard. Anyone have a suggestion?  UPDATE: I have enough suggestions, thanks! I don’t need any more!

Nobody reads this. Advice continues to flow in. She’d delete the whole thing . . .  but a bunch of people made useful or entertaining comments that she doesn’t want to lose.

So she calls me to vent. I sympathize. I’ve seen this happen. It’s happened to me. And it’s all fodder.

H.G. Wells once said “No compulsion in the world is stronger than the urge to edit someone else’s document.” 

Back in his day, Wells was right. But he died several decades before Mark Zuckerberg was born. These days, the urge to give advice on Facebook leaves editing someone else in the dust. 

And I’ve probably done this myself. Heck, I’ve probably done it to Barb a time or two. And she'd be the first to admit that she's probably done it herself on occasion. It's human nature, after all.

Not sure there’s a solution. I love it that people on Facebook are so incredibly generous with their time and talents. I’m not going to stop consulting the hive mind, as we call it.

I just wish there was a well-established etiquette on when it’s good to add my two cents and when it might be . . . overkill.

Comments

[Greg Herren]

I wish I had a dollar for every time I've seen Barb do either of these things and get those reponses.....

[Mark]

Well, if she doesn't want to plant garlic....

I understand. My favorite has been when I vent about how long Amazon takes to ship stuff to me (I'm not a prime member and refuse to join because of this) (and this was pre-lockdown. I get their slow shipping speeds now) I will have half a dozen people tell me to join prime. I will specifically say I am not going to join prime because they are purposefully giving me bad service so I will join, and they will tell me to join prime anyway.

It's selective reading. I will joke about it, but many people seem to have it, and it is getting worse.

But it is funny to see on someone else's post.