I’ll go first: “You have to have children when you’re young,” told to me when I was in my late 20s, with no desire to ever have kids, and no means to support them, by someone divorced multiple times with at least one adult child who does not speak to them.

Also: Responding to “How do I deal with this problem?” questions with “Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s enough that you’re even thinking about it!”

    • axolittl@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Ah yes, the good ol’ “Just get over it” technique that is supposed to work for any mental health condition.

  • I was a new dog owner, went to /r/Dogs to ask about a particular behavior my dog was exhibiting I’d never seen or read about before (turned out to be normal tho) and every reply I got basically told me I don’t know how to care for an animal and that I should give him to someone else.

    It was then I realized that it wasn’t just /r/RelationshipAdvice that was full of bitter, jealous losers whose advice is always “dump them.” It applied to literally every single subreddit dedicated to advice. They may have started with good intentions and knowledgeable people, but over time filled up with people who had no business giving anyone advice.

    • ezchili@iusearchlinux.fyi
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      Oh yeah even lifeprotips, if you go in the comments it’s just full of people grasping at straws to find the tip useless and upvoting each other’s cynicism

      There was one: “If you want a fridge’s compressor to turn on and off less frequently (ie: if you sleep in the same room), fill it with water bottles to increase thermal mass” and the top comments were “Actual life pro tio: get an apartment with 2 rooms???”

      I was like: are these people actually that slow?

      The less there is to say about an advice, the less reasons you have to go write a comment. Therefore the people in the comments are often outliers

  • QubaXR@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Don’t ever quit.

    Screw that. Quitting is healthy, quitting is good. Nothing worse than digging yourself deeper and deeper based on sunk cost fallacy.

    • axolittl@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      “Don’t be a quitter” is like saying “Fuck your boundaries. Stay in toxic situations no matter how bad they get.”

    • the_third@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I always tell them “Following that logic, there’s only one person in the world that can complain. But that dude really got it bad.”

      • rmuk@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        My counter is always, “and there are people better off than you, so stop being happy.”

  • omey@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Me: having a hard time mentally and emotionally Someone: “You need to pray to God to make your troubles go away.”

    • Anonymouse@lemmy.world
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      Am I supposed to upvote this because it’s awful advice or downvote it because it’s depressing advice?

      It seems like this person either had success with their advice or had nothing to say, but felt the need to say something.

      My favorite advice for clinical depression is “just snap out of it.”

    • ZombieTheZombieCat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “Nothing happens in god’s world by mistake.” “God never gives you more than you can handle.” Etc etc.

      When 1 in 6 women has been sexually assaulted in their lives (and many men and NB folks), that’s a really fucked up thing to say. You never know what someone’s been through, and I’ve personally been through a lot of awful things. I guess it helps some people to tell themselves this kind of shit, but it is impossible to me to think of any kind of meaning that would make being a victim of violent crime “positive” or “worth it” or “a learning experience” blah blah blah. I think the term for that is “toxic positivity.”

      So either “everything happens for a reason” is utter bullshit, or god is a sadistic fucking asshole.

  • kakes@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    My dad threw a party to celebrate when I graduated university with a degree in Computer Science.

    At the party, my dad’s friend took me aside and said “My nephew just got a degree in electrical engineering. Now that’s an up and coming field, you should get a degree in that.”

    Like, alright buddy. Hopefully that career pays well enough for another four years of student debt. I’m still kinda in shock at how dumb of a thing to say that was.

    • Krakatoa@lemmy.film
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      1 year ago

      Ah yes the brand new exciting world of electricity. Rumor on the street is they’ve got this fancy new device called a tellyfone that uses this electricity. You can talk to anyone in the world!

  • NewEnglandRedshirt@lemmy.world
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    Someone told me that if I wanted to be a history teacher I should get a degree in special Ed to “make myself more marketable.” It took 14 years to get out of special education and land a job teaching history

      • NewEnglandRedshirt@lemmy.world
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        Teaching as a profession sucks ass in general right now… but at least a lot of the special educator-specific bullshit is not my problem anymore. But thank you.

    • Jim@lemm.ee
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      Coincidentally, I know someone who recently applied for a regular teacher’s assistant role and when they got to the interview the hiring director didn’t even ask questions about that position; instead they interviewed for a special ed job and then only offered that. It was a total bait & switch to try and fill a role nobody was applying for.

  • RedBike23@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That since I was pregnant it was time to let my career go.

    My career is critical to my family’s ability to live a middle class life (and it’s critical to my sanity and happiness, but the person who gave me this “advice“ wasn’t really one for acknowledging or valuing mental health).

  • sadbehr@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    When talking to someone about mental illness: “You know it’s all in your head right?”

  • Frater Mus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    What is the most unhelpful advice you have received?

    • "They’re your family so you have to maintain a relationship with them’
    • “man up”
    • attend church
  • quadrotiles@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    The usual acne related ones, like washing my face more or using tooth paste on my spots. Turns out clearasil won’t fix your hormones.

    Use olive oil instead of sun screen because it works better than SPF and isn’t full of chemicals.

    When taking a taxi on a short stop over in Dubai, the taxi driver told me not to have blue hair (which I had) or no man will ever want me, while my then boyfriend was also sitting in the taxi, masquerading as my husband (we were wearing rings and just letting people assume we were married, which everyone did. Including the taxi driver!)

    Work related: don’t make my code too “complicated” or my one coworker can’t understand it (read: my coworker doesn’t know what async means, and instead of him learning, I’m just not ever meant to do anything async… When processing huge amounts of data… Also, error handling is too hard, don’t do that either) yes, I will forever be salty about this. He deleted weeks worth of work while I had covid because he didn’t even try to understand it - his reasoning being “it doesn’t work anyway, so there’s no point in understanding or learning what I’m doing”

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
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    “You just have to work through the pain.” I’ve injured myself multiple times in the past exercising by following this idiotic advice.

    It’s one thing to push through discomfort, that’s how your body gets stronger. But If you’re in actual pain, stop and listen to the alarm bells your body is giving you.

  • SomeoneElse@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Everything happens for a reason”

    • technically correct, completely unhelpful.

    “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle”

    • Fuck. Off.
  • majestictechie@lemmy.fosshost.com
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    1 year ago

    When I used to make notes because I don’t retain information instantly my boss said “Just don’t forget” I exclaimed: “Thanks, I’m cured!” The office got a laugh but it still bothers me that he thought it was a choice

    • Zeth0s@lemmy.world
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      For me it’s the opposite, at school I was forced to take notes. Teacher would give me bad grades if they saw me not talking notes. But notes are completely useless for me, and if I take notes I don’t understand the lecture. So I started the habit to sketch on notebooks pretending to take notes. Schools can be pretty stupid

  • notmyredditusername@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    “sleep when the baby sleeps”

    Yeah because there’s absolutely nothing that needs to be done once I finally get my daughter down. No washing and sterilising, for prep for us or for her, general chores around the house which you can never do effectively one handed. And fuck me if I wanted to try and relax and have an actual evening after they’re down too.

    “Sleeping like a baby” had also never seemed like such a juxtaposition!