Monday, April 25, 2011

What does Abby do that is effective? Do you think she gives good advice? http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/

61 comments:

  1. I think for the most part she gives good advice but the problems are so simple that the people could solve it on their own. What she does that makes her the most read is she has a friendl attitude and makes all her lettters very personal.

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  2. I think Dear Abby has better advice for males because she is a woman and can relate to what woman seek. She is down to earth and laughed at some April Fools Joke or something someone said, she seems like she is not too uptight. I think that her advice just comes from prior knowledge and can help the person she is advising by using her female resources.

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  3. I agree with Zach. These people could probably solve their own problems, but they may just need some reassurance from another percon. However, they may be nervous about asking somebody because they may feel embarrassed. I think that is why they go to Abby, where they can be anonymous.

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  4. Her advice is almost like conciese directions on what person can do to be a better person.

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  5. I think that she gives the same advice anyone would give. But the thing that makes the advice effective is she says what you should do in a caring way, and people that seek her advice are looking for just that.

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  6. I agree with zach, however, this is a simple situation that many people deal with so the advice that she would give for this would be fairly simple. If you look on other dates the advice she gives is better, but she usually is biased towards one side. She wont give information suppporting more than one side or give any other options, so that is one down side to dear abby.

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  7. Ryan connor and zach are both correct a majority of these problems could easily be solved if these people just used common sense.

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  8. I do not think that she is very effective because she only responded once. Once is not really enough because although it was good advice she has to explain more.

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  9. I agree with Ryan. The people writing in could probably ask anyone else for the same advice but not only may they be embarressd, they may just want and impartial point of veiw on their issues

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  10. I agree with Ryan on the fact of how people are much more comfortable with being anonymous than stating their name. I personally think it is better to not state your name, because there may be people that know who is writing to the columnist and it could cause some problems..

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  11. I think she does give good advice on the matter but it is nothing special.

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  12. I find it interesting that this woman dedicates her life to helping people confidentially. People like to help people to get publicity like athletes who go to homeless shelters, but the fact that this woman does it on a small scale under the radar really gives her more credit than others who help for publicity.

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  13. Another post that I really enjoyed was the one about the man on April 6th, who was having trouble deciding if he should marry his spouse or not due to the fact that he was still attracted to other woman. I liked it because she told him straight up, if your unhappy and you are attracted to other people, than face it, she is not for you. Abby calls it like she sees it.

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  14. She is very unbiased in her advice and she doesn't try to fully take sides. In this way, she can give advice that calms down the feelings of the "asker" and give logical advice.

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  15. Dear Abby is effective because it gives other stupid people adivce on stuff. But some of the are so simple like: should I go out on a Friday or next friday. or wiether or not get the Kiwi shampoo smells better then the Mango shampoo weither or not my husband/wife will enjoy the way my hair smell. That's a bad example but some people give the Dear Abby very simple stupid problems. If only you stop and think maybe of a solution will come up to your head =)

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  16. Caley Remillard
    I agree with Zach. It helps that she is very friendly.

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  17. yes i also agree with what everyone is basicly saying how these people could solve there own problems. Although, i dont think she gives very good advise becuase there mostly just state common answers i think.

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  18. What Abby does effective is that she answers questions in a way that everyone would understand and she is very friendly in the advice she gives. I think she gives great advice, all her advice is understandable in this world.

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  19. I agree with Alec, the advice she gives is nothing special. These are all basic problems with fairly basic solutions. Nobody is asking what to do because they lost their job and their home and need reemployment or anything like that.

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  20. Even if these response letters seem like they are not big to some who are reading, the responses most likely mean a lot to those who they are mean't for, which allows me to give her more credit than others give him.

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  21. Another thing is, is that she is very general in her advice. Because of this, it not only helps the person asking, but it can also help anyone in similar situations.

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  22. I agree with Zach, the question these people ask are really simple and they could solve them on their own. I think that they think they should ask someone else for help. Abbys advice is down to earth like Tyge said. She seems to know what shes talking about.

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  23. I agree with zach also that she is very caring and she gives them empathy.

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  24. I think that what Abby does is effective. All she wants to do is be helpful and I think she does a good job with that. She allows people to get their questions answered while staying anonymous.

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  25. Meredith Walsh:
    Dear abby is effective because she does give good advice to others in need of it. If she didn't give good advice in the first place then nobody would actually write to her with questions and concerns.

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  26. Tyge you make a lot of good points but I think she can handle women just as well as males. She has a lot of prior knowledge like you said because she is an older person who has plenty of experience in life.

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  27. Her advice is straight to the point and reassuring. She is very kind to the people.

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  28. I agree with Jessica. In order to have an effective advice colomn, The advice has to be relatable to everyone

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  29. Although this woman is most likely helping the people sh is responding to, I find her responses a little lacking and not helpful, but I was not the person reading the letters, most likely why I do not find the responses helpful.

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  30. I agree with Mike. She doesn't give biased advice which is never good to do when giving advice to people.

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  31. The only problem with the advice is that she does not talk about both sides of the argument.

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  32. Earlier I said that it might not be a good thing that she is biased and gives a strong opinion towards only one side of a story. Now after reading a lot of her advice it is always good and probably helpful to people. I have to agree with alec though, its nothing special, just a small scale advice blog.

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  33. Dear Abbie is effective because she talks to everyone as if they are her good friends and seems to actually care for every person she writes back too, and maybe she does. She gives an unbiased opinion which gives people hope and good advice to help solve their problems.

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  34. I think that another reason is that Dear Abby is unbiased and gives a third person, basic perspective on things. For example, in the example Tyge used by the man who was attracted to other women, she could tell that the woman he was debating to marry was not for him.

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  35. Meredith Walsh:
    I like her answers to different questions. I read one about a woman scared that her son would never talk to her again because she told his girlfriend about previous relationships. The way she handled it and told the woman that she admired her for doing that, was great.

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  36. Abby gives answers that are clear and straight to the point. She doesn't beat around the bush or try to sugar coat anything. Shee gives the person what they're looking for, which is a legit real answer. This is effective because she is honest and real. She gives rational answers that are realistic and do-able. She also doesn't judge people or say rude things.

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  37. I think she gives good advice, but I also think that she gives very safe advice. She tries to give the very general and non-risky advice so that she can't get blamed later on. It is also good advice because it can help people in many different variations of a situation.

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  38. Shounak, I agree. I think it would be difficult to respond to some of the people. But she seems to do a nice job with all of them.

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  39. Dear Abby is effective because she actually answers the questions that people asked. She doesn't ramble on about irrevelent things. Also, I she uses past experience to help people, which is very effective.

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  40. Meredith Walsh:
    I agree with Ryan Connor about how she is unbiased and gives great perspectives on things.

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  41. I disagree with Tyge in that Abby is probably equally effective at giving advice to men and women.

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  42. John Wahl Your logic is very valid, i agree that her job isnt very difficult, its all very self explanatory.

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  43. I agree with Marissa. One thing I noticed was that she does not judge at all. Which I think is important.

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  44. People keep saying shes biased but i honestly don't think she is biased, and thats hard to do.

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  45. A lot of you are saying that she is 'friendly' which is true. It is also a give in though if you think about it, she cant be unfriendly and hurt people because they are relying on her for guidance.

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  46. I agree with Michael. She gives very safe advice.

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  47. I agree with Alec and Jon, even though this advice column is helpful, it's not anything special.

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  48. i agree with everyone who is agreeing with me. If you look at the situations almost all the problems the people have are stupid. They feel guilty for using free gifts, they feel thay don't have enough friends, the list of things they need are absolutely idiotic.

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  49. Sully makes a good point. Her advice is very safe, she doesnt give any advice or say anything that could get her in the least bit of trouble or anger someone. She also probably tries not to give any advice that will get the writer/ person looking for advice into trouble.

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  50. Dear Abby relates to all the problems that people write about and makes them feel as though she went through the same thing at some point in her life, she gives them insight on the issue. She also gives them hope and good advice to help them deal with what they are going through.

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  51. I agree with sully, it's general advice rather than something specific for them to do. When giving someone advice you don't want to seem like you're coming off telling them what to do

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  52. Jerzy your absolutely correct, she seems very educated none the less and could help anybody. Thanks for the support Ryan Connor. Haha. OK.

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  53. Abby gives good advice for troubled writers but what is nice about it is that it is short and sweet. She gets right to the point. I think she gives good advice but maybe should give a little more to be more specific.

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  54. I agree with Jerzy, I think she's nice to people because she is expected to.

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  55. I agree with Michaela. It makes people feel as though someone can relate to them.

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  56. Dear abby also proposes multiple solutions to the problems. She looks at the problems with more than one point of view in order to provide an accurate insight. She also looks at both sides of the problem in order to not give a biased opinion.

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  57. I agree with Jerzy. She has to give "safe" advice so she doesn't hurt anyone's feelings. Therefore, is that the real advice she'd give if she could express her opinion and be bias?

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  58. Marissa I agree, where do you people see any bias?! I think that's kind of wrong to be saying. I'd like to see some valid points showing bias please.

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  59. It's human nature to take sides or have an opinoin in a given situation, so the fact that she mostly doesn't is really good. I don't think she should be penalized for being biased every once in a while

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