Egg on Face
Evidently I made Je' feel like an asshole.
Je' says: "I was trying to be funny in that asshole sort of way that does the exact opposite of what was recommended. So if you come to them with a problem, they not only assume that you want THEM to fix but they completely trivialize it to the point of their 'advice' being extremely unhelpful for it's vague obviousness." I couldn't put it better myself.
But I'll try. He's saying that I came to him (or, more accurately, the web) with a problem, and rather than accept his "advice", which wasn't actually advice, but fake advice that intentionally sounds irrational to make a point, e.g. this. So rather than get a chuckle from it, I took it seriously and bristled. Well, it happens. People take me too seriously (or, very rarely, not seriously enough) and I took him too seriously.
I got caught up in my own argument, an argument that's not even mine, that all advice, be it good or bad, is to be rejected in principle because it is simply a subconscious attempt by the advice-giver to control the behaviour of the person receiving the advice. Time and time again, I read articles that tell me what to do, often without even explaining why. The appeal is based on the quality of writing and the authority of the writer rather than the reasons for doing something, i.e. how it benefits the person to do something and what the costs might be. An alternative—a better alternative— to advice is information. People are generally smart enough to make decisions for themselves, and provided with enough good information, people generally make the right one. The right decision for them.
An example and an alternative. Say you're designing a website, and someone says "you must design using standard practices". Say this comes from a web design luminary, like, say, Jeffrey Zeldman. His mantra is using XHTML and CSS without using tables, which hardly anybody advocates not doing. He's smart, though, in that even though sometimes he tells his minions what to do (which isn't very good), at least he gives concrete reasons as to how it benefits both the producers and consumers of websites: for website producers, faster development time in the long-run and separation of content and design; for the consumers, smaller, more elegant files to download for the consumer which look highly similar in different web browsers. Saying "I design to web standards" is actually probably enough for a new web developer who knows the status Zeldman has in the design community. Although it's not the best fact that he could state, it still leaves it up to the reader to decide for himself or—increasingly—herself whether a web design luminary using a certain practice is reason enough to follow that practice, rather than being told by said luminary what to do.
So, Je', you'll forgive me while I wipe the egg off my face, but I remain resolute to this among my other 3-word mottos: information, not advice.
