Anyone here still read Ann Landers or Dear Abby? Can I ask why you do it? I know why I do. It’s the same reason I rubberneck at the scene of a horrific traffic accident.
Why are they still writing these columns? They’re each 347 years freaking years old. When they were growing up, I’m not even sure the human race had evolved two separate sexes yet.
Look, three lines of advice will NEVER sway anyone away from their opinion if it’s held on strongly enough. Take a stroll over to GD sometime and you’ll see that thirty posts won’t even do it.
Here are just a few of their crimes, feel free to add more:
The poetry readers send in is so boring that when I start to read it, my walls beg me to watch their paint dry instead just to save me the suffering and agony of even one stanza seeping into my consciousness.
Ann and Abby spread urban legends faster than snopes can deny them. Honestly, is there not one person on either staff with a modicum of common sense?
They misattribute nearly half the quotes and famous sayings they use. Does anyone working there even know how to open up Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations?
They feed the trolls. Look at today’s paper. Abby or Ann (does it even matter which, like you can tell them apart anyway) ran a letter from someone saying that every single teenager, yes every single one, was a troublemaking snot nosed kid who listened to loud music and had no respect for anyone or anything. I’d ask you to read the letter yourself, but I don’t want to subject anyone to the vapid oblivion that is Ann and Abby. But this letter writer was a troll, pure and simple. Here, on SMDB, we can ignore the troll and he or she might go away. The mods can eventually ban them but not before the damage has been done. Ann and Abby have complete control over their columns though! Why do they insist on publishing those letters?
They can’t even give consistent advice. Pick up their column on any given day and I’ll give you even money that they’ve published someone’s letter telling Ann or Abby how bad their advice was that they gave to “ambivalent in Alzheimerland” or “moaning in mygodwillyoujustretirealreadyville.” They give an alternate viewpoint and then, nine times out of ten, Ann and Abby tell us “oops, give us 50 lashes with a wet noodle we blew that one.” Look girls, you’re professional advice columnists. If you can’t keep a consistent opinion for more than one week why should I even bother trying to respect your advice?
Can anyone help me here? I would love for you to add 6 through infinity if you have them, but I also want to hear from people who respect Ann and Abby. Why? For the love of Allah, why?!?
Fucking word to that.
If I see, “Would you reprint…it’s my favorite?” ONE MORE TIME…
Although i did like the letters from retail workers on how customers should act…
I read it. It’s mostly just to be amused at the people who write in . . . it is truely amazing that, upon writing those letters, the author doesn’t smack themself in the head, decide they’re an idiot, and move on with their life.
Ages ago, when I actually read those columns, there were generally three letters. One wouldn’t be a question to Ann or Abby, just a basic story or such. The second would be a correction of one of their prior errors, and the third would be a question they would botch up, which would have to be corrected at a later date.
Net result: zero.
You guys are gonna love this, from alt.folklore.urban…
From: linden@positive.eng.sun.com (Peter van der Linden)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: The snoping of the Landers-babe
Date: 18 May 1994 18:43:19 GMT
snopes’s recent trolling of batty old Ann Landers is a spectacular triumph for him and for AFU in general.
Landers has become a very wary quarry since I exposed the hoax of her claims about continual ragging from Yale University. (She used to claim all the time that she was particularly targetted by Yale students, but could always spot their fake letters. She was wrong on both counts).
In Ann’s column on Monday June 29 1992, a reader wrote in, claiming to have been a victim of the old chocolate chip cookie recipe two-fifty charge. Ann branded the letter a hoax, and warned her readers against spreading urban legends such as this, or the old P&G/Satan rumor.
On the other hand, I successfully trolled Ann Landers into actuallytrying a mixture of lard and sugar as a soap substitute (printed in the old bird’s column on July 14 1989. (Little gator on AFU was driven to try it herself too, in case it really did work, and I recommend that everyone reading this also put it to the test.)
Sadly, I had no answer when I wrote to Ann asking her advice on a family problem, but describing her own circumstances as though they were mine…
Dear Ann,
My own sister runs a counselling service that competes with my
own business. To top it off, she says mean things about me
behind my back!
I have stopped speaking to her.
Should I swallow my pride and make up with her?
I feel such an old phoney; people come to me for wisdom and I can't
even work out my own family problems. What's your advice?
No answer!
Despite Ann’s oft-repeated claim that every letter is answered, on this occasion answer came there none.
Good point. But I’ll bet lots of people do. Like here. I’ll compose something to the Dope about my problem-of-the-day and then chuck it. It’s therapeutic. (I don’t always do the smack thing though.)
I’ve read Ann and Abby for years. It’s kinda like getting clearer advice from your parents or grandparents as these two are about the same age as my mom, only more with it and I can also turn the page when I realize the answer to the question is a no brainer instead of going into MEGO.
I read the column today, and I was quite surprised at the answer she gave to the “all teenagers suck” letter. It’s aboot fucking time someone stuck up for them. Maybe it was a troll, but I was still impressed.
If I need advice on something important, I’m not going to send it to Ann Landers or Dear Abby (I almost typed “Dead Abby” by mistake, but maybe that’s appropriate) and not only wait for ages for them to get around to answering my letter, but take the chance that I don’t read the paper the day they do get around to printing a response. By the time the response came out, the situation I needed advice on would probably have already been resolved.
I would go to talk radio with my problem – dumb answers, but dumb answers RIGHT NOW.
So, any guesses on when the mug shots they use with their columns were actually taken? 1980, perhaps? 1975? They just don’t seem to age, now do they?
Years ago, they did have a fight over something ( I think it was over the issue of one of them was getting a divorce and the other one said she wasn’t trying hard enough to keep the marriage intact) and spent about 10 years or less not speaking to each other. They patched things up and resumed a normal twin girl sisters relationship.
One even delayed releasing one of her books so that her sister could release her book at a specific time so that they would not be competing on the book shelves. This, naturally, was before the era of Harry Potter.
Their pictures, however, have to be from the late 70’s.
Funny Side bar: In one of the episodes of Futurama, the guy from our century was being shown the cyrogenics unit ( or something like that) and the shower said, " And this is where Ann Landers and Dear Abby are hooked up 23 hours a day ." and one of columnists sits up ( all wrinkly ) saying,
“Twenty lashes with a wet noodle”
