Normally I'd post this Dear Abby

[conuly]

over at agonyaunt, but it's obviously fake, so why bother?

What gets me is that the people in the comments are reacting as though it isn't obviously a troll attempt. Are they that gullible? (Don't read the comments to find out - it's, like, 75% slut-shaming homophobes, and those are the people I haven't blocked yet.)

The letter's kinda funny, though, with its incredibly blatant and apparently effective button-pushing. Nice touch having the LW be in a same-sex marriage.

Comments

[cynthia1960]

Might be an interesting meta exercise to discuss how to tell when letters are faked or an troll attempt.

[conuly]

well... I also kinda feel like I posted four letters in two days, so....

[cynthia1960]

let it sit for a while...maybe it's something to bring up when things are slow.

[librarygeek]

THAT meta analysis would be helpful for me. I'm highly verbal, but still autistic.

It's the LW same-sex marriage contrasting with the being upset over their teen's identity that had me going "wait, what?!?"

I was more confused than anything else.

[conuly]

Yeah, the subtle reveal that it's a same-sex marriage is what put it over the top for me too, but there's other things - the fact that this child, at 14, describes herself both as "bicurious" AND "pansexual" (and poly, but that's a different axis) - it's possible, 14 year olds say a lot of stuff, but I don't think most people would pair those two words. Then there's the fact that it's not enough for this child to be nonbinary, they're also quitting sports left and right for that reason... and the sport in question isn't an especially gendered activity. Plus there's the histrionics about how the kid dyed their hair pink after the parents put their collective foot down, and the handwringing about how all this affects the kid's popularity with the boys... rather than any concern at all about the kid's mental state.

It's crafted to hit ALL the anger points for EVERYBODY.

[adrian_turtle]

School track teams can be bizarrely gendered*, but it's outrageous to talk about a 14-year-old kid quitting any kind of team or school sports and not mentioning COVID. It's also outrageous to talk about depression and losing friends without mentioning quarantine isolation.

*You'd think the girls and boys would wear similar clothes, but the girls' shorts are required to be much shorter and tighter than the boys. This can be really uncomfortable for a non-binary kid or a girl uncomfortable with her body. A religiously observant girl might be able to get her parents to raise hell and get a special exemption to the uniform...I sometimes see one kid on a girls team wearing tights and a hoodie, or an overskirt, but never one in longish loose shorts like the boys wear.

[ioplokon]

Oh? I thought the whole understanding with advice sites was to like, keep kayfabe that the letters are real? As long as the columnist does, at least.

[conuly]

If you're going to write your own letters, they should be believable.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

There have been a few letters that were too believable to be real--this was before they'd hit on the framing tactic of 'drawn from online'. I think some of the advice columnists are running into submissions being too poorly written/too incriminating and 'needing' to Edit such that a jackalope results. Though, subtle, so more like mix and matching because the materials had patchy good bits.

Occasionally satire instead seems to be the final recourse.