I have a voyeuristic obsession with advice columns (OBSESSED #11)
Not gonna lie — it feels good.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have taken a kink quiz, and those who use their time in a way that aligns with their goals and values.
Of course, I’m sure there’s more than one kink quiz — the internet likely contains two, maybe even three quizzes about sex! But I only recognize the legitimacy of The BDSM Test, as found on bdsmtest.org (it’s a dot org!!), because its website is actively unreadable. This, to me, suggests the quiz was written by deeply conscientious scientists unconcerned with things like “web design” and “things that look good.” These scientists understand the vital importance of a person knowing yet another useless fact about themselves.
I’ve taken The Kink Quiz at dinners, bachelorette parties, on road trips. The quiz is, clinically, batshit, and its results are not to be taken seriously … unless they ring true. Just as the P*ttermore Sorting Hat quiz reveals me, time and time again, to be a prideful Gryffindor, The Kink Quiz’s results have remained stalwart in the four or so times I’ve taken it.
There’s no way to mince words here: I am a voyeur.
The verdict rings deeply true, in large part because of my obsession with advice columns. Dear Prudence, Pay Dirt, Sex Diaries, The Ethicist, How To Do It — on any given evening, between the hours of midnight and 1 a.m., I’m lying in bed, compulsively reading the archives of one of those columns from months or years earlier. It’s tough to pin down why they’re so addictive, but I’m hopelessly hooked. Is it the cognitive dissonance of the advicee laid bare on the page? The delectable details you get about a life that means nothing to you, leaving you free to judge it without abandon? The plain ol’ intrigue of a meaty, complicated social problem? I studied psychology in college, compulsively read advice columns and work as a journalist. Clearly, there’s some part of me that gets off on peeking behind various curtains.
So, today, I’m going to share three delectable advice columns, in the hopes of fostering your own obsession with inner lives. Let’s dive in, shall we?
The Cut’s Sex Diaries: The Woman Whose Husband Is Sleeping With Her Best Friend
In every New York Magazine’s Sex Diaries column, an anonymous New Yorker walks you through a week in their sex life. I’m obsessed with these columns, and have easily read between 50-75 of the 700 columns that have ran since 2015. To me, the sex is the least interesting thing about them (“least?” that’s a lie) — the real voyeurism comes in the glimpse you get into the relationships, doubts, infidelities and desires of New Yorkers insane enough to share detailed accounts of their sex lives with a national publication.
These columns range from mildly titillating to almost certainly fake; one memorable column described a woman crawling on all fours in a Tinder dude’s apartment in the midst of some amazing sex, only to return home, text a casual hookup, meet up for some amazing sex, then meet up with another fling the next day for — wait for it — some amazing sex. But the above column rings true, because it’s straight-up disturbing, and not in a cute way. The woman loves her husband, her husband is sleeping with her best friend, and she’s fine with this, because she’s sleeping with the best friend’s boyfriend. Also, she thinks the set-up is, ultimately, a good thing.
The whole situation is equal parts messy, embarrassing and a little sociopathic — a chaotic cocktail that feels emblematic of the human experience. Drink up.
Slate’s Dear Prudence: Kids From Poorer Neighborhoods Keep Coming To Trick-or-Treat in Mine. Do I Have To Give Them Candy?
Dear Prudence is Slate’s long-running general advice column. It’s an OG among online advice columns, having run on Slate for nearly 20 years. Dear Prudence’s archives are a vast, voyeur’s paradise of hidden diagnoses, workplace dalliances, stolen baby names and, yes, twincest.
(Hi, Charlie!)
(Charlie is my twin, who also reads this.)
(We do not sleep together.)
Voyeurism is especially fun when it involves watching awful people reveal their monstrosity to a wider audience, wholly unaware that they’re unmasking themselves as somebody who’s more deeply fucked up than anybody else in the room. This particularly column, in which a rich woman contemplates her obligation to give poor children candy, scratches that itch raw.
Social Qs: An Enemy Has Infiltrated My Walking Group. Help!
The New York Times’ Social Qs column is a newer addition to my roster of regularly read columns. Its described as offering “lighthearted advice about awkward social situations” and is a nice contrast to the heaviness often found in Prudence and Sex Diaries. The problems in Social Qs aren’t real problems; one column features a woman who’s upset that her friend’s mom died, leaving the friend unable to dog sit.
The above column is nice, juicy and totally pointless. A woman is in a walking group, and somebody in her group just invited their bestie to join. There’s just one problem: the woman had a falling out with that bestie years ago! What ever will she do? Confront the person who invited their bestie, and ask them to rescind the invitation? Confront her own desire to join a “walking group”? Think, but for a moment, about the world’s suffering and realize how cosmically lucky she is to have a clean bed?
You’ll have to click to find out, and it’ll feel good.