How online advice columns teach us to tell our own stories

[NelsonG]

When we spend so much of our time online, we’re bound to learn something while clicking and scrolling. Discover something new with Mashable’s series I learned it on the internet.

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Filed away in my vast catalogue of Deep Dark Fears, subfolder Internet-Related, is the dread of discovering myself as the antagonist in an advice column letter. 

During one especially rough period in a years-ago job, I had to stop reading Alison Green’s excellent work advice column Ask A Manager. I was irrationally anxious that I’d come across the untenable situation I was in, neatly recounted so that Green could rule against me. The mere sight of a “34F” (my current age and gender, not my bra size) in a Reddit advice post often gives me a momentary flash of alarm before I read on and confirm that no, I am probably not the writer’s soon-to-be sister-in-law who’s demanding that her pet ferrets replace the groom’s nephew as ring-bearer. Read more...

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