I often wonder how hard it is to actually write an advice column. The people reading it are obviously desperate and will listen to anything you have to say, so you could tell them just about anything and they’d be grateful for it. If it works great, if it doesn’t work, there are really no negative effects for yourself. If you are a weatherman and you screw up, due to something that isn’t even remotely your fault everyone hates you. Not true with advice columnists. They get a free pass to tinker with other people’s lives. It is like being a robot repairman, full and well knowing that whatever you do to try and fix the robot, it won’t completely break it. The person is just happy you tried to fix it.
What are the qualifications to be an advice columnist? Good listener? Psyche degree? Wise Sage that lives in the foothills of Mt. Everest? Nope, I think all you have to do is have some sort of mailing address, be able to put together congruent sentences, and most importantly have some sort of witty alliterated alias/column name. Example ‘Chris Christopher’s Caring Corner. It also might help if you change your first name to Doctor or throw in a fake PhD in there somewhere, for everyone trusts a doctor. What newspaper would not pick-up that advice column? Especially given the state of the printed news? They need gimmicks like advice columns.
No comments:
Post a Comment