I need help. I grew up in Idaho, a pretty, if somewhat backwards, state. Recently, an acquaintance from high school posted this on Facebook [sic throughout]: "Isnt this great? Americans have put a socialist into the White House – a socialist who wants to indoctrinate our youth with his socialist agenda. Hitler was able to spread his ideas by appealing to German youngsters. Dont let obama get a hold of our children. Socialism always fails."

This is why I can barely stand to look at Facebook.

Teachable Moment?

Dear Teachable,

Two separate issues here. #1: Facebook. FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEBOOOK. Of all the near-inescapable modern conveniences that simultaneously make our lives better and worse but mostly worse, Facebook is king. It's like how your DVR dutifully records every episode of Anthony Bourdain's increasingly meh Travel Channel show but inexplicably refuses to record Mad Men, multiplied by spending a day feeling sad about something you found out by Tumblr-searching your name, ALL THE TIME. You think all the time about deleting yourself from it. You even know people who have done so! And you respect them for it, but it troubles you that you now have no handy way of remembering their birthdays.

Also there's something about "deleting yourself" that's just … well. "Deleting yourself." It doesn't sound cheery.

But then something like this happens and deletion starts looking better and better. If only you could delete some other people while you're at it! Some kind of kamikaze app.

Seriously though I think how you respond to this is: it's not enough to just hide her like you do the people who take quizzes or update you on how many novel-words they wrote that day. You probably have to de-friend this person, and you have to tell her why. Passively maintaining your acquaintance/not rocking the boat is making you feel guilty for a reason, and the reason is not that you're a perpetually-guilty East Coast liberal snob. It's that you're a good, right-thinking human being with a shred of conscience and common sense and soul, and anyone who a) calls Obama a socialist (I wish!) and b) says "socialist" like it's a bad thing is just not.

Your message goes, "Dear Tater Ann, I wanted to let you know that your status update offended me for reasons x, y and z, and it probably also offended a lot of other people who feel that you're too much of a lost cause to bother confronting you about this. I don't, which is why I'm sending you this message. But if you respond to this message with anything less than courtesy and willingness to accept that you might sometimes be in the wrong, I'll start. Your friend, Teachable Moment."

But nicer, I guess. Sorry, I am bad at "nicer."

XOXO,

Answer Lady

Previously: Teen Email Disaster!

I am a totally unfamous novelist in my late twenties. I sometimes get email from readers but it's rare enough enough that I am usually taken by surprise when it happens. My "fan mail" is flattering but also sometimes unnerving and/or a pain in the ass. Sometimes the emails take the form of traditional "I really liked your book!" but other times they are totally random and weird. One time someone asked what kind of underwear I wear, and could I please send a used pair. Other times I get emails from teenagers.

I feel kind of weird about the email from teenagers because I'm a grown man, and should I really be emailing with children? But I feel obligated to reply out of politesse. Also I myself had a youthful email correspondence with this zine person I admired, and he was really nice—he even invited me to go to Wigstock with him. (Looking back, I really wish I had gone.) I consider my correspondence with him to have been formative for me in my late-teenage years, but that was before everyone was freaking out about pedophiles and these days I just don't think it would be a good idea to have that kind of relationship with an underage reader, no matter how aboveboard and Dear Mr. Henshaw-y.

Being Too Forward

Dear Too Forward,

We've learned a valuable lessor or two here, right? Never forward anything as a way of mocking someone ever again. Never talk shit about anyone behind his or her back ever again. And never make fun of someone else as a way to make yourself look good.

Haha, just kidding. I mean, it would be nice to live by these rules, but let's face it, we are not saints. Lucky for us! While it seems fun in some ways to spend your days hugging hundreds upon hundreds of your hippie supplicants, it also seems taxing and like it might give you a perpetual cold. Happily, that is not our dharma. We are not saints, we're just ourselves, and sometimes we are going to make total boneheaded errors that, just merely remembering them will cause us to flush and shudder for years afterward.

Email lends itself so easily to this kind of hideous embarrassment—it's sort of the dark hidden cost of all the happiness and convenience email brings into our lives, that it can function as a permanent and shareable record of our most hideously embarrassing moments. This is part of the reason why I can't fully enjoy Moe and Georgia's Crap Email From A Dude project. Who among us hasn't sent an email, with either mistaken or just retrospectively wrongheaded intent, that would qualify as hideously Crappy? We're all guilty, all of us, of having said and done some stupid things, and twenty years ago those things would have just faded into memory. Now, though, concise records of many of our mistakes are owned jointly by us and whoever we humiliated ourselves in front of.

This teenage boy now has the power, if he wants to, to make a whole bloggy stink about how you are such an asshole. He probably won't—he's probably just as embarrassed by the whole thing as you are—but he could. And even if he doesn't, just knowing that he knows that you had a moment of preening self-importance at his expense—well, that is the kind of thing that would (and does!) keep me up nights, Too Forward.

But let's pause for a moment here—before I tell you what you can do to make this right (not much!)—and consider another side of this story. What if you are not entirely in the wrong, here?

You mention that you have a hard time figuring out how to respond to "fan" emails but you also allude to the fact that most people don't know how to go about, well, sending them. In the age of everyone/no-one is famous, this is a big, widespread problem. Pre-Facebook, pre-Direct Message, pre-Reblog, if you wanted to get in touch with someone you had never met but felt like you had something to say to, you had to do some things! You had to go to the library, look him up in Who's Who, find the address of his publicist, then write a letter, address it to the publicist with a pen, fold the letter into an envelope, put a stamp on it and deposit it into a mailbox. That last sentence contains at least five words that I'm pretty sure my youngest cousins, Dylan and Kaylie, would not understand. (Though D and K are very helpful if you are trying to figure out how to use an iPod Touch—it's not that intuitive, okay?)

The relative ease of clicking "send" makes contacting a stranger seem less of an occasion for formality and politeness. It isn't. It's wrong to assume that just because you know a lot about someone or you appreciate her work, you are allowed to address them as you would a good friend. Familiarity with a person's work also doesn't make that person beholden to you. Forward, you are correct to feel obligated to respond to "fan mail," but you shouldn't feel obligated to respond at length to emails that are rude or strange. And if someone has dashed off his email without a thought as to how it might be received—eg, he has written you an email containing no preamble and some non-sequitur factoids—you're within your rights to think it "crazy," and to be confused about how to respond.

All that being said, though, you know you fucked up when you forwarded this email, and you need to apologize to its sender, especially because he is sixteen et cetera. Be humble and solicitous and kind and sincere in this apology. But don't debase yourself too much, or say anything you wouldn't want made public—you never know who has a mean streak and a Tumblr. Or you do know, and it is: everyone.

Questions? Oh please let us help! Write Emily's private line here.

Previously: How To Deal with Blog Comments from Yo Auntie

Naughty Niece

Dear Naughty,

First go register the domain for Postcardsfromyoauntie.com. J/k. (But still, the part about Brazil… she KNOWS, right? Doesn't she know? She has to know. What, they don't have TBS reruns of Sex and the City in the wolfless land where she lives?)

I think that obviously you should not approve this comment. I say "obviously" but actually, maybe it's not obvious? For example! I used to think it was somehow my ethical responsibility to approve any comment that anyone left on my blog, no matter how deranged or stalkerish or misguidedly left by a befuddled older relative. That philosophy was self-flagellating and dumb. If you maintain a website, you implicitly endorse all its content, even the comments—so you have every right to exercise discretion about what gets posted. "Approving" a comment doesn't means you "approve" of its content, but it does mean that you feel it is a sentiment worthy, for whatever reason, of inclusion in the discourse around Tarkovsky or LOLcats or whatever your post was about.

For example, I refrain from deleting comments solely because they're insulting to me, but when people use my comments as a forum to insult other people, I delete their comments and, if possible, I email them and tell them why. I also delete comments that are personal, like the one you received, simply because the comments aren't an appropriate venue for one-on-one correspondence.

So all you have to do is contact Auntie [Redacted] and tell her, "Dear Auntie [Redacted], I am so tickled that you read my blog! It's nice to hear from you. But next time you want to get in touch, I'd like it much better if you emailed me directly than if you left your thoughts in the comments. When you write in the comments, you're talking to everyone who reads my website, so it doesn't make sense for you to say something there that you really only want to say to me."

That's all! Problem solved. Also, leave your pubic hair alone! God put it there for a reason.



Have you a problem? Consult our answer lady, who is sensitive to all issues. Write her private email here!

Previously: Do I Have To Go Visit Those Babies?

I'm a lady at or around the age of 30, as are many of my friends. I live way up at the top of Manhattan, in faraway Inwood, but many of my friends live down under Manhattan, in faraway Brooklyn. When I want to see one of my Brooklyn-dwelling friends, we generally get together somewhere in between, so neither of us has to make the 1-1.5-hour trek to the other's house (and back, which is usually worse, or more expensive, on account of it being at night).

But, oh, Answer Lady… lately my friends have started having babies. Like, in the last couple of months. Sort of all at once. It's weird. ANYWAY, I feel like you can't ask a mom to haul her just-gave-birth-body and her screaming 8-pound new-born to Korea Town or the West Village for get-togethers. If I'm not mistaken, the expected thing is that I go visit them. In Brooklyn.

Selfish?

Dear Selfish,

Your question is trickier than it seems on the surface, I suspect. I mean, as to whether you ought to suck it up, grab a good book, spend an hour and a half on the A train, and try to hit up as many babies as you can in one trip to Brooklyn: yes, duh. You won't have to do it every weekend or anything, and you won't have to do it that many times. They won't be little immobile babies and weary sleep-deprived new moms forever. It will just seem like forever to *them.*

You won't even really notice it, because your life will go on and you'll start spending more time with your friends who live near you and don't have babies, and they'll start spending more time making macaroni crafts and freaking out about how much mercury is in sardines and stuff like that. And also they'll spend more time with their friends who live near them and have babies around the same age as theirs, because that's how it works. And that's what your question is really about, I think: "Can I still be friends with my friends who have babies, even though our lives are necessarily super different now?"

And, I don't know! I hope so. I think probably not, though? Your friendships will definitely change. And that is okay, Selfish. Imagine how boring things would be if everyone just continued to be childless and carefree forever, and your hangs with your girlfriends were exactly the same now as they were in your early 20s except now everyone is older? People are growing up and doing grown-up things like buying apartments and getting married and having babies, there is just no stopping that stuff from happening, Selfish. And it can be a little sad and lonely and inconvenient sometimes for those of us who either aren't doing these things yet, or don't plan to do them ever.

The compensatory thing, though, is that we don't have to constantly worry about a little human being being totally emotionally, physically, and fiscally dependent on us for his survival. Bonus! Or, is it? I dunno. As a very wise cartoon crab once said, the seaweed is always greener in somebody else's lake. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make an appointment for my elderly cat to have $1300 worth of dental surgery.

Troubles? We can help! Write to the answer lady's private tipline at advice at TheAwl.com if you please.

Previously: Should An Athiest Tell The Family That She Prays?

I'm an atheist, but many of my relatives are very religious. This doesn't come up very often—for one, I don't see my relatives that much—but when they send me cards they often make reference to God, prayers, blessings, etc. My cards say things like "Happy Birthday" and "Congratulations." However, I recently sent a get well soon card to my aunt who has a chronic illness. I know she takes comfort knowing that people are praying for her, but I can't in good conscience claim to be praying for her—even though I'm thinking about her and hoping for an improvement in her health. From their perspective, I think this sounds somewhat flimsy.

Shortly after, my uncle-in-law's mother passed away, and I expressed my condolences and likewise said that I was "thinking of him in this difficult time." Again, I felt like I wasn't saying the sort of thing he wants to hear. Since thinking and hoping for someone is kind of like prayer, should I just split the difference and use their term? Especially since they're the ones going through a hard time? Or is it insulting to their faith to use a language I don't believe in, just to gloss over some social difficulties?

Just Like A Prayer?

Dear Just Like A Prayer?,

I spent a lot of time pondering the answer to your question—I focused my intention and thought about your problem hard and hoped for a resolution that would satisfy everyone! But does that mean I prayed over it?

Well, it depends who you ask. I'm pretty sure that in either of the spiritual traditions I am familiar with—Ultra-Reform Acoustic Guitar And Rainbow Kente Cloth Yarmulke Judaism, and yoga—this kind of thinking and hoping could pass for "prayer." Addressing your prayers to a deity isn't as important, in my interpretation of these schools of thought, as using prayer as a meditative practice, a way of getting in touch with the universe outside your own head.

One of the things I always liked about the temple I grew in with was my rabbi's constant reassurance that, despite how some of the language we mouthed during services made it seem, God wasn't an egomaniac who required our constant worship. Instead, prayer was meant to be a way for us to shape our inquiries and seek meaning outside ourselves. Via this school of thought, you wouldn't exactly be lying to your relatives if you did want to say you were praying for them, because your feelings are the same as theirs even though the words you feel comfortable using are different.

Mm, but. My two-sentence Talmud aside, I wonder whether you really ought to kowtow to your sickly, elderly relatives' wishes. Your real question, it seems to me, is, "Should I fudge the truth about my beliefs in order to prevent my family's feelings from being hurt?" And my answer to this is actually no. I mean, if granny on her deathbed is like "And now I can go to my heavenly father, to get my eternal reward," it is definitely not your job to volunteer that she is equally likely to meet Rainbow Brite and a magical winged pony and Santa Claus all hanging out with Jesus on the Other Side.

But at the same time, you shouldn't feel that you have to fake religious faith you don't feel. I know this will sound weird coming from me, but spirituality is intensely personal and private! It might be the only thing I feel to be truly private. And, assuming they know about your atheism, when your relatives impose their "praying for you" and "God" and "blessings" on you, they are being rude and invasive. It's fine for them to pray for you, of course, but it's also fine for them to keep it to themselves.

So I think you should keep doing exactly what you're doing, Just, and you should be honest, if pressed, about why you're doing it. Fortunately for you, part of their religiosity is—or ought to be—a deep-rooted belief in forgiveness. And if you get static, you can feel very free to remind them of this as often as necessary.

PS: Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. Sorry, I just had to get it out of my system.

Questions? We can help! Write to the answer lady's private tipline at advice at TheAwl.com!

Previously: Do I Acknowledge The Plight Of Gays At My Straight Wedding?

At my wedding [Ed. Note: Damn, it is wedding season up in this advice column!] in fast-approaching 2010 I would like to somehow recognize those in the audience who were or are unable to marry because they are gay. A wedding ceremony inherently contains a wealth of self-aggrandizing pats-on-the-back, but I feel like it's doubly in-your-face-haha-we-are-getting-married for those who can't do the same. Our audience will have both family and friends in those shoes, spanning the Greatest Generation to Gen X. What is a tasteful way to incorporate this sentiment into our all-too-hetero ceremony?

p.s. The ceremony is not in a religious venue, obvs.
p.p.s. I don't mean recognize like "Hey, Anne, she's out there and cannot…" but more generally. Also obvs.

Dear Conflicted,

Skip it. A wedding ceremony is going to be in-your-face-haha-we-are-getting-married no matter how many caveats about "sorry we're getting married when gays can't or couldn't get married too" you throw in there. And actually, it seems to me that it would be nearly impossible to express this sentiment in front of the "audience" — it might behoove you to start thinking of them as "guests"! — without seeming like you are patting yourselves on your respective backs even harder. You know? A) for getting married and B) for being good people who care about evil and social injustice.

I think, Conflicted, that your vows are not the time to grandstand about your stance on gay marriage, or Darfur or universal healthcare or freeing Mumia*. Your vows are, for better or worse, only about the two of you. (Vow joke!) If you do say something, even if you don't single out Anne or whoever, Anne or whoever is going to feel singled out, possibly in more ways than one. Instead, talk to these friends and family members privately about your feelings, if you think they might not know where you stand, but save the speeches for a marriage equality rally. Which, you are probably going to one of those every weekend, right?

*this joke seems really dated but, you know, he is still in jail!

Questions? We can help! Write to advice at TheAwl.com!

Previously: When Two Men Fall In Love

Last summer, I met the love of my life. He is entrancing, gorgeous, hilarious, unusual, and has many other good qualities. All of my friends, to a wo/man, are thoroughly, 100% approving. Lest anyone be bitterly judging me, please know that I had been dating extensively (and apparently wrongly) for TWENTY-THREE FUCKING YEARS.

When two men fall in love and wish to merge their assets, or, should I say, in my case, their debts, a strange new world of options awaits them. For instance, my gay upstairs neighbor recently appeared with a ring on his finger. He is affianced! (That is a word that always reminds me of "refinanced" and I suppose it's not too much different, don't you think?) I was shocked. I suppose I am from another time, even though I am from the Generation X.

Formerly Always Never A Bridesmaid

Dear Formerly Always Never,

First of all congratulations. You have attained the summit of possible human achievement. (Really!) Now grab it with both hands and don't let go!! (Not really.)

Not that I am going to actually try to dissuade you from being married, FANAB. I am as much of a sucker for the ceremony of the bells and lace as the next Joni Mitchell. And simply by being gay you have eliminated like 50% of my possible objections to the institution of marriage—the "to love, honor and obey" stuff that creeps in among the readings from J.G. Ballard and Cambodian translations of Cranberries songs at even the most alterna- of modern-day heterosexual weddings. Women who think they want to be married have to grapple with the historical role of marriage as a tool the patriarchy uses to subordinate women; you are not a woman so, head on over to the Tom Ford boutique, pick up one of those little registry stun-gun things and start zapping!

OK, but actually put the stun-gun down and let's talk about a couple of practical details for a second.

You raise an interesting point when you mention the similarity of the words "affianced" and "refinanced." Now, if you are planning to jointly own property or jointly raise some children, legally turning your relationship into a small business makes practical sense. But the logic that two people ought to mingle their bank accounts simply because they are in love—well, that has always seemed flawed, to me. Money, as Cyndi Lauper so astutely pointed out, changes everything. Think of the last time you had a relationship—not a romantic relationship, necessarily, but a roommate relationship or parent-child relationship—where you felt financially beholden to someone, or someone felt financially beholden to you. Did that dynamic subtly poison the relationship?

Without the cushion of cultural assumptions like "I'm the man and I'm the provider, it's my job to take care of my family," the merger aspect of marriage seems to me to be a recipe for inevitable conflict. But then again, so does having to keep track of who paid for what in a relationship where both parties maintain their fiscal independence, so this issue is not a dealbreaker so much as it is, like, something to keep in mind. There is actually a lot of boring, legal stuff to keep in mind. That's the thing about marriage: on the one hand, it is this quasi-mystical union of souls, and on the other hand it is like a trip to the DMV.

Also, are you going to, you know, forsake all others? I know this is horribly old-fashioned and unrealistic of me, but I think you should. I guess open marriages work for some people, but let's be honest about the fact that those people are, for the most part, crazy freaks. (Or: fans of subtle emotional torture and denial.) I mean, shit happens, but preplanned shit with rules happening constantly just seems like it defeats the purpose. And there is a purpose, right? Let's quickly run down a list of bad reasons to get married:

1) Might as well.
2) To make your single friends have to spend a day with the thought "What if I never find this kind of love" in the back of their minds at all times.
3) For housewares.
4) To make your parents happy.
5) In order to have a big party where people have to treat you special while they seethe with tragic envy (see #2).
6) Possibility of appearing in Vows column.

So what are the good reasons? Well, I can really only think of one.

Recently a friend of mine went out for drinks with a mutual friend of ours who's getting married soon. When my friend got back from the drinks I asked, "How is [Mutual Friend?]"

"He's freaking out about the wedding."

"Why?"

"I don't know … maybe because it's terrifying to imagine spending the rest of your life with the same person? I mean, don't you think it's terrifying to imagine spending the rest of your life with the same person?"

"It is totally terrifying to imagine spending the rest of your life with the same person," I said, and I meant it.

It is terrifying! Of course it is terrifying. But I still felt disquieted by this conversation, and I only figured out why a few days later, when I realized that there is a corollary to what I'd said.

I don't think it's possible to love someone so much that the horror of "till death do us part" is eliminated. But maybe it's possible—I want to believe that it's possible—to love someone so much that this terror get superseded by a bigger fear. So if your terror of spending the rest of your life without this person outweighs your terror of spending the rest of your life with him—then, FANAB, you should marry him.

Oh, and I like this place, for flowers, if you're doing it in New York.

Questions? Write to advice at theawl.com!

The Devil maid me do it.

Dear Devil-maid,

There is this song we used to sing in Girl Scouts about old friends and new. How did it go again? Something like, "Make new friends, but don't feel any guilt if you fail to keep the old, one is silver and the other's batshit insane in a specific way, it is terrible that our society promotes and indulges this variety of insanity."

I could go on for hours and pages about how the wedding-industrial complex neatly encapsulates everything gross about consumerism, then swathes that capsule in the sickly-sweet buttercream of sexism—and how appalling it is that so many women still willingly gulp it down. I'd go on to talk about how wedding-induced situationally-acquired narcissism deserves its own page in the DSM-IV. I would probably also want to include something about how every time I hear a member of my own generation stare at a piece of hardened carbon on her hand and say something like "You guys, can you believe I'm going to be Mrs. [his name] in just two months and twenty-five days!" I want to mail an engraved note on heavy stationery to every member of my mother's generation of womens' rights activists that says, "Apparently we are fucking everything up and ignoring everything you did. Sorry!"

But this is not Jezebel.

So I will limit myself to saying that this woman is doing life wrong, and you should not feel any compunction to enable or congratulate her in a bridesmaid capacity.

Okay, just to clarify: I am not against people getting married. As far as I can tell, marriage—though imperfect—is the best arrangement humans have yet come up with to create little sustaining team units that can prop each other up through life's tough patches and child-havings and so forth. You can do this stuff without official marriage and people certainly do, but there is something nice about having a piece of paper from the City Hall that formalizes your arrangement, even Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Saarsgaard have come around on that score now. Weddings, though, I think we could pretty much do without.

"Oh," I hear you wannabe wedding-throwers say, "But my wedding will be different! I am going to keep things really *low-key*! I am going to be an *indie bride (groom)*!" Here is the thing: I'm sure this lady who is making spreadsheets for her bachelorette parties thinks SHE is being really low-key too. She probably posts on the "kvetch" boards on indiebride.com about how "low-key" she is being and why can't people understand that she just wants them all to have fun, and relax, and be happy for her from 2:15-4:30 next Saturday at the pre-shower "just relax" spa outing?

Then she will read some other lady's posting about how pissed she is that her professionally baked Steampunk wedding cake was exactly the same as someone else's Steampunk wedding cake and totally sympathize.

Devil-maid, you have to call this woman up—resist, always, crazy
email's intrinsic hit-replyability—and tell her that you don't think you can be the bridesmaid she wants you to be. It's not her, etc. But resist the temptation to mention her outlandish demands, your current employment status, the global financial crisis—actually, avoid specifics entirely. Listen to everything she says and respond to it by saying that you understand, and you are really looking forward to the wedding. Then, when the wedding comes around, see if you can have a good time at it! It is, after all, just a party—no matter how much *every goddamn thing in the universe* seems to be conspiring to make this lady, and the rest of us, feel otherwise.

Previously:

· I Am A Hermit And Is That Okay?
· I Can't Invite My Friends Over As I Have No Drugs
· However Do You Integrate Terrible Events With Your Online World?

I am kind of a hermit. I didn't use to be. Anyway, I don't have any friends where I was transferred to three years ago (which is a pretty urban, cosmopolitan place, as long as you stay well within the city limits), unless you consider the Internet a land mass, nor do I feel like meeting or dating anybody or even having much sex even though I am gay and have quite an active libido. I am quite old, but I am fine with that too, much finer than I was with being young, in fact. Nonetheless, I'm conflicted about the fact that I think I'm fine with not having any friends, a mate or even anonymous sex, because I think that's weird or maybe I think that other people think that's weird. Does the fact that I occasionally think I am weird about this actually mean I'm weird about this, or am I just giving into the societal pressure exerted on me by my non-existent peer group and I'm really fine with it? Did I just answer my own question? Maybe I think I'm weird because at heart I know I'm damaged goods, and I just don't feel like discussing that 2 to 3 times per week, via Manhunt or in the Local Volleyball League? But what's wrong with that?

Yours Truly,
Bewildered (Or Not)?

Dear Bewildered,

My first thought on reading your question was, "Live however you want. Who am I to tell you how to live?" But this is not a tenable stance for an advice columnist to take, I guess.

And that is what I am: an advice columnist. Not a therapist. So I wish you had saved the whole 'you have to read between the lines and figure out my real problem because I won't actually come out and say I have one, I'm fine with how I am' schtick for your therapist! He gets to sit there and ask leading questions and draw you out, and also he gets paid. Sussing out the subtext of a question like this is above my pay grade (an expression Alex Balk taught me, perhaps not surprisingly).

So I am just going to be super literal and answer the question that you supposedly want an answer to, which is "What's wrong with [being a hermit with Internet friends and no 'real' ones]?"

There are two possible answers to this question and they are both kind of stupid.

Answer one is: "It is both illogical and pathetically old-fashioned to privilege meatspace socializing over online friendships. The attitude that things that happen online don't 'really' happen isn't just passe, it's dangerous, because it leads people live by different rules in this world that they merely imagine to be imaginary. Better that we all acknowledge the Internet as, for all intents, a real
place. The reason you don't miss having a social life is because you *do* have one — it just takes place on the Internet. Nothing wrong with that. Carry on."

Answer two is, "Unplug yourself from the fakely controllable world that you are using as a substitute for the much scarier vagaries of social contact in the physical world. Certainly in-person interaction
is full of potential for humiliation and rejection and worst of all BOREDOM, but it is only via live, face to face human interaction that you can find the kind of connection with another human being that's
the only thing that makes our lives meaningful. Seriously, think about it: will the people who you "know" and "talk to" online miss you when you die? I don't think they will, because what memories of you will they cherish? This is what they'll remember when they think about you: the experience of looking at a screen and typing. And, you know, that memory might get jumbled up with some four million other memories of that same experience. They won't be able to recall your inflection as you said a specific thing, the expression on your face or the way you walked or laughed, and so they won't even be *able* to remember you. If that sounds okay, carry on."

Both answers are stupid, Bewildered, but they're also kind of both right.

Bonus third answer! Your mileage, as they say, may vary. I put your question to a friend who had experienced a long hermit-ish period that he is still shaking off. He thought about it for a minute. He takes more time to collect his thoughts than most people do, he looks down and lets a silence build while he actually thinks about what you said, then looks up with this endearing serious crease between his eyebrows.

Anyway, what he eventually said was, "He should start going to a church. It doesn't matter what church. It doesn't matter if he believes in it at all. A lot of the people who go don't."

Previously:

· I Can't Invite My Friends Over As I Have No Drugs
· However Do You Integrate Terrible Events With Your Online World?

Thanks,
Faux Pot

Dear Faux Pot,

Ah, just like the famous song by The Hold Steady: "You don't have to deal with the dealers/ Let your boyfriend deal with the dealers/ It only gets inconvenient/ When you've long since broken up with that boyfriend and have mostly quit smoking pot but you still occasionally want to make America's Next Top Model watchable and not constantly mooch off your friends." I am paraphrasing but I think that's basically how the song goes.

Drug etiquette is really hard because the people involved in questions of drug etiquette cannot be relied on to perceive things accurately. Like, are you sensing that your friends are tired of your mooching? Well, maybe you are just being paranoid, about that! Seriously, I think it's likely that your friends do not care (from the one sentence I know about them, they seem easygoing). Which transforms your question from an etiquette question into an ethical question. I'm glad you decided to address it to me and not to Randy Cohen! Once we stop worrying about your friends, your question becomes, "I am a grown person. Is embarking on the project of buying my own drugs at this stage in the game an assertion of maturity and independence or a regression into immaturity and dependence (on drugs)?"

I feel you on not wanting to buy drugs, Faux. There are some things where, it just seems too weird to be doing them for the first time after age, say, 25. Like getting a tattoo or trying ecstasy or anal sex, embarking on a relationship with a drug delivery service seems like the kind of thing that, if you were ever going to do it, you would have done it already by now.

There are two types of people in New York—and, who knows, maybe the world! But actually I think this city's uniquely crushing grind of ambition and disappointment both attracts and breeds ultra-high-functioning kinda-addicts—people who have a dealer and people who are friends with people who have a dealer. You are the second type of person. It's not that you couldn't become the first type of person in the time that it takes to make a phone call, it's just that there seems to be more at stake in the decision to become that person than just money and an awkward moment of trying to make a minute's worth of conversation with someone who goes to NYU.

Cause here is the thing: your friends are not going to come over and smoke *all* your pot. After they leave, you will still have some pot lying around. And then a couple of days later maybe it's raining, and sure, you *could* go out, or, fuck it, you had a long day, you will just make some pasta and sit in front of the tv eating it and watching all the Millionaire Matchmaker episodes that you have DVRed and maybe you'll smoke another bowl and make some weird snack that's like, chocolate syrup inside a rolled-up flour tortilla. AND THEN SUDDENLY THAT IS YOUR ENTIRE LIFE.

I think what Emily Post would say is, go ahead and straightforwardly ask your friends to BYOM, but make it clear that they aren't supposed to bring anything else and then make sure you have plenty of delicious
snacks and wine for them when they come over. Or you could try having a non-high hang with them and see how that goes. Who knows what reality TV is like when not seen through a veneer of mind-altering substances? Certainly not your trusty answer person.

Previously:
· However Do You Integrate Terrible Events With Your Online World?
· How You Should And Shouldn't Do Karaoke
· Making Plans, Selling Out And The Prisoner's Dilemma Of Friendship Communication

Emoticons Are Inadequate

Dear Inadequate,

This is a really good question, and I don't know the answer.

A guy who I'm facebook friends with — we've met IRL twice –recently got in a bicycle accident. "pretty sure i broke my wrist and collarbone last night on a training ride. horrendous crash. spectacular, really. going to hospital now. should have gone last night. painful, painful, painful," read his Facebook status the following morning. Later, in amongst the sympathetic comments on a follow-up status update (the collarbone did turn out to be broken, as did his right radius), he wrote that he was now typing with one finger.

A few weeks ago, I was relieved to get a response to an email I'd sent to a friend who I see less often than I'd like, maybe once every three months. It had been a few days since I'd sent her the innocuous "miss you, let's hang" email and I had just been starting to wonder if I'd done or said or written (hey, it happens!) something to offend her. "This is sort of a weird email to send, but I'll always go for awkward over needlessly suspenseful," she wrote, then revealed that she'd been diagnosed with a serious chronic autoimmune condition but was "totally fine."

And then today I was checking my email while walking down the street and in amongst the junk mail and news about new twitter followers and work stuff and 'did you see this link" emails there was an email with the subject line "[Friend's] Mom," and the mom in question had been diagnosed with a particularly virulent kind of cancer a few weeks ago and I already knew without even opening the email what it would say. I stopped walking down the street. In my initial response to our mutual friend's I initially typed a :( after the first sentence but then I went back and deleted it.

And now I just went and looked at this friend's twitter and facebook wall, where she has posted a beautiful, but ambiguous (because less than 140 characters) couple of sentences about loving her mom. Some of the people who've left comments under it on her Facebook wall clearly did not know that her mom had just died; others left non sequitur comments about Battlestar Galactica.

So, Inadequate, I am pretty sure I know exactly what you're talking about.

Here is the thing: terrible and serious things are going to happen to all of us, and most all of us have some kind of online presence now. In a crisis, the ability to simultaneously communicate with all our friends (and "friends," and people we met once or knew in middle school or strangers who have taken an interest in our doings and thoughts and the links we like) can be a huge asset. Not having to expend the time and effort needed to individually contact everyone who might care about us — well, that is very useful, in a crisis. And when we're feeling alone, Facebook and twitter and tumblr and blogs can make us feel less alone. As these technologies, and the people using them, come of age, it will stop seeming so jarring that news of our loved ones' deaths and diseases and injuries and endangerments are
delivered to us by proxy, sandwiched between other people's musings about the Real Housewives of New York. I think.

Because it's not actually that weird, that people use these means — which we associate with informality and jokes and offhandedness, because that's how they're most often used — to share serious and consequential and personal information. In real life, seriousness and absurdity aren't kept cordoned off from each other, so why should online life be any different? That is how I'm trying to think of it, anyway. Remember that old Dave Chappelle sketch "what if the internet was a real place," where the Internet is represented physically as a mall full of people who offer you free music downloads and debt consolidation and "goat play?" I mean, that sketch is so funny because the internet really is exactly like that, except in one corner of the mall there's a funeral going on, right next to where the goat play happens.

The question, I guess, is does it trivialize death and trauma to talk about them in real time, online? Inevitably it does, a little. What especially trivializes bad things is when anonymous commenters are given the opportunity to talk about them, because inevitably someone will say something that, even if it's well-intentioned, reads as direly wrong and offensive. And while anonymous commenters pretending to care about something bad that's happened to someone who they feel a false sense of familiarity with are bad, anonymous commenters using the opportunity of someone's tragedy or trauma to mock them — well, that is probably the worst thing about the Internet. Besides, you know, white supremacist sites and sexual predators and Tucker Max.

The only "advice" I am going to give you, Inadequate, is that when you're emailing or twittering (won't. say. tweeting.) or updating your status or your blog or your tumblr in a time of crisis, think hard about who you're talking to. If you're okay with talking to everyone, go ahead and talk to everyone. (Seriously). But if you're not, then no pressure. It is okay to leave some parts of your life undocumented.

Also, my condolences about the terrible thing. Whatever it was I hope you feel better. And, you know, all the other platitudes that probably sound empty to you right now whether a stranger is typing them or a good friend is saying them out loud.

Previously: How You Should And Shouldn't Do Karaoke.

Cherry-aoke

Dear Cherry-aoke,

What are the odds that you would ask this question after I did karaoke last night? Crazy. It's almost like you don't exist and I made up your question so that I would be able to talk about a pet topic.

So, one of the reasons that I am qualified to be an expert on karaoke etiquette is that I have in the past been a total psychotic abject failure of it. Yes: I have been that girl who ruins your birthday party by singing a song from Pippin when everyone else just wants to shout along to 'Baby Got Back.' I have also, in the past, snatched the mic out of people's hands because they were "doing it wrong" (sorry Pareene's girlfriend! You caught me on a really, really bad night).

But I've come to recognize the error of my ways, and if the rest of the karaoke-doing world could also come to realize the error of THEIR ways, we could meet halfway and come together in perfect, um. Well. Let's just work on melody for now, I don't want to get too ambitious.

So my problem is that I err on the side of being a total mic-hogging diva who refuses to read the mood of the room when selecting or performing her songs. This is Karaoke Person Type One. I actually have encountered worse examples of this type than myself! I was out with one of them recently. She has an amazing voice but seems not to understand that having an amazing voice is not the point of karaoke. She was halfway through that long-ass Nina Simone ballad about "Youuuuu kiss me, I hear the sound of mandolins," her second or possibly third song in a row, when someone said, "Uh, should we all just leave so that you can be alone with this song?" Exactly, and exactly what not to do. You must always keep in mind that you are performing for other people. It's ok to take pride in your performance, but an obvious and useful metaphor here is sex: you are having fun by making it possible for someone else to have fun, and if you're not, you might as well be doing it by yourself.

Also, long slow songs like that one are a huge faux pas unless you are an amazing master and you've perfected your French-Canadienne accent and are about to wow me with "It's All Coming Back To Me Now," because I've always fantasized about someone doing that. "There were nights of endless pahleahhsshure!"

Karaoke Person Type Two is the opposite of type one: the timid shy karaoke flower who needs the moral support of two or three friends in order to shout the lyrics of 'Like A Virgin' into the microphone with her back to the audience, giggling. No. No! Commit. Commit or go home. If you don't enjoy getting up onstage by yourself and singing in front of people, maybe karaoke is not for you and you should consider an alternative activity, such as: Anything besides karaoke. I understand it's your first time and you're scared, but you'll never get used to the temperature of the water by dipping your toe in. Be brave and relax and for God's sake, face the audience. You know the words!

But actually please avoid that song, or anything else from the Immaculate Collection. Also please avoid:

· Rapping unless you know every single word and can nail it. Rap fail is the worst to watch. Rap success is amazing to watch, especially when a cute girl dominates 'I'm a Flirt' or some such. No one in the history of time has ever succeeded at the rap part of 'Waterfalls' except Lisa Left Eye Lopez and she's dead, so.

· Chumbawamba

· 'Stay,' unless you are ok with everyone singing along. Seriously, it's shocking: Burly muscular tattooed crustpunks will totally belt "keep me cause you know you're just so scared to looooose." Ditto 'What's Up' (4 Non Blondes), which makes me sad because it used to seem like this was my exclusive jam. I guess it's ok that it's not anymore, though, because it is a little sad to have to be like "Twenty-seven years of my life and still, trying to get up that great big hill of hope for a destination."

· Songs from musicals unless it is a safe space for that. Know your audience. If there are more than five heterosexual men in the room, limit yourself to 'Hunger Strike' and Weezer (stealth gayness).

· Songs no one knows.

· Creed.

· Britney, unless you have a vocoder implanted in your chest.

There are probably more rules that I could think of but I drank bubble tea cocktails last night (why??) and it's time for me to put my head down on my desk for a while.

Previously: Making Plans, Selling Out and the Prisoner's Dilemma of Friendship Communication.

Dear Answer Gal,

—Grumpy Old Coot

Dear Grumpy,

I guess you want me to say that these people are jerks who are wasting your time. You want me to be like, "Here are the rules: they should think before they hit send on unnecessary texts and emails. They should pick up the phone and interact like human beings." But why should I bother? You already know that these people are jerks who are wasting your time. Here is my question for you, Grumpy: why do you keep putting up with it?

I'm going to gaze into my crystal navel piercing (I don't really still have a navel piercing, but this is my way of saying that I will use my own experience to extrapolate something about yours) and guess that you may be paid to put up with similar behaviors in your working life, and this has made you so beaten down that you'll tolerate the same behaviors in your so-called "friends" that you are paid to tolerate in your superiors and business correspondents. There is no good reason why those people can't get it together to learn how to send effective emails, either, but you can't tell them to go fuck themselves or send them links to "let me google that for you." Well, you can, but jobs are hard to come by these days, I hear, so probably you ought not to.

I wish you could, though! I bet you work in book publishing. (I'm not basing this on your email address or anything!) Ok, so, as everyone knows, making it in that industry is now especially a WAR OF ATTRITION. There are a series of culls that happen, it's sort of a choose your own adventure game, actually.

Cull one is: are you rich/do you hate yourself enough to tolerate making this little money? Cull two is, are you willing to buy or sell, like, Meghan McCain's book so that you can make money/get promoted? If you pass cull two, you will probably at some subsequent point ask yourself why you're in the book business when nothing you're doing recognizably has anything to do with "books" as you know them, and so cull three, 'As long as I am going to sell out I might as well sell out bigger" happens.

So then, here is who wins the adventure: rich or self-hating people who are soulless but filled with inertia. Of course this type of person is going to attempt to outsource Googling.

The good news is that while you can't pick your bosses and colleagues—except you can, by quitting and moving to an ashram and maybe you should consider that!—you can definitely pick your friends. If you aren't ready to delete someone forever from your contacts because she sends four "makin' plans" emails then switches to text then reconfirms day of by asking you how to get to Prospect Park, then it's on you to grow enough of a testicle to tell her that she's being annoying.

And tell her via phone call or IRL conversation, not via emailing her a link to this column.

The original Social Q, from the New York Times: "I recently started dating a guy who is smart, funny and successful. But he has longish fingernails, which completely gross me out. On our second date, he wanted to hold my hand, which I promptly refused. How can I tell someone I just met to please cut their nails, or it's over? Anonymous"

Haha, why do I feel like "hold my hand" is just as much of a euphemism here as it was in the lyrics of the Beatles' first #1 song? I mean, you do not have to be an especially smart hysterical teenager to figure that one out, right? "And when I touch you (on your … hand?) I feel happy, inside/it's such a feeling that my love I can't hide …" Ew, this song still creeps me out. "My 'love' (hint: boner) I can't hide?"

Basically "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is more explicit than Ginuwine's 1996 song "Pony" (which only went to #6 on the Billboard charts but still gets plenty of airplay on WEMI, the radio station in my mind that specializes in terrible mid-90s R&B, songs from musicals, and commercial jingles. By the way, the cover art for that Ginuwine single is shockingly understated and pretty, leading me to conclude for the 11,000th time that my teen years might as well have happened in a different CENTURY. Well, they technically did, but you know what I mean. 1996 was really its own thing. Also popular in 1996: Nine Inch Nails! Yes! You knew I would circle back around to the topic at hand eventually! Talk about songs that are way too obscene to potentially be playing on the radio when one is in the car with one's mom: "I want to what you like an animal?" We were in the parking lot of the White Oak Library when this happened, I remember it very vividly. In that moment I wished that Tipper Gore had won, so that I wouldn't have to defend the free speech rights of someone who thinks it's ok/original to rhyme "penetrate" and "desecrate" (and "complicate"!). And why is it that even though I am, whoa, 13 years older now I am still in the position, sometimes, of defending the merits of music that I don't even like to my mom? Like the other night—I was home for Passover/Easter—I put on Bon Iver during dinner because it was the most dinner-appropriate thing on my iPod, even though I am not a big fan of Bon Iver. I have this thing still where I cannot dig nonsense lyrics, so he lost me at "laughing legs like lily loons" or whatnot.

Anyway, my parents hated Bon Iver and I had to explain why it is good, even though I don't even think it's good! Why is it on my iPod? Are you following me here? Sexually explicit ("I want to feel you from the inside")—or non-explicit in a way that's even creepier than being explicit ("I feel happy inside")—lyrics are not okay, and neither are nonsense lyrics. I'm so glad your question was "what kind of song lyrics do you like, Emily?"

Okay but really, about this guy's long nails. The answer, like it almost always is, is just fucking talk to the person. Say, "I think you are really hot in all other respects but the reason I didn't let you touch my vagina the other night was, your nails are too long. Please cut them." The end!