TODAY'S advice columnists, having inherited a form best-suited to a simpler time (breakfast tables, quiet mornings, the rustle of the newspaper), are now heeding their own oft-repeated counsel and refusing to let themselves be defined by their past.
Indeed, as more advice columns take root online, the limits that bedeviled the "agony aunts" of the last century can seem like a major hindrance. Not only did all reader-writer correspondence travel at the speed of snail-mail, but in the old columns, tight word limits meant heavy pruning of letter writers' queries and inflexible brevity in the columnists' responses.
In print, an advice columnist usually has about 800 words to answer three different letters. That means each letter and each response will be about as long as this column is so far.
In Cary Tennis' "Since You Asked" column on Salon.com, however, it's not unusual for readers to spend 1,000 words explaining the nuances of their concern, or for Tennis to respond at the same comfortable length.
But for Tennis, the way the Internet has truly redefined advice writing is by changing it from a simple two-way exchange to a sprawling many-way conversation. In a typical "Since You Asked," dozens of readers grapple over how best to advise the letter writer -- and whether Tennis' answer was any good.
"There are people writing in that are much smarter than me," he said. "A lot of the readers are really well informed," adding that rather than presenting himself as an expert, he prefers to play the part of "just one more friend sharing an opinion."
"It's that open-source concept. People come in and improve on my initial response."
Although that may sound like a lot of other noisy echo chambers around the Web, open-source wisdom does have an advantage. In debates on politics and sports, most readers are sounding off on subjects they have little experience with. But everyone has lived a little.
In a recent letter to "Since You Asked," a troubled but intelligent 18-year-old woman wrote that soon after she had signed military recruitment papers, she'd changed her mind. How could she get out if this jam before they shipped her to boot camp? Tennis responded that she shouldn't worry -- from what he could gather, it looked like she wouldn't have to go if she didn't want to.
