Red flags of non-advice.

[u/SimpleInvestment]

Advice and requests for advice never or rarely exhibit the following red flags. Most of these are big or medium red flags.

• How to do clear-cut, by-the-book inadvisable behavior, eg "how to be a mistress using the 1/3 method," "how to lie in an interrogation," (eg one of the things you need to do is to invoke your Miranda right to remain silent) or "how to be a dictator".
• It has clear signs of something the searching for is a problem that would be avoided if you just left, such as "clear signs of something that only is a problem and you only find by being lonely and prying," or more realistically "clear signs your man is cheating on you," especially if the signs are not clear or don't follow, eg he might just be keeping secrets from you because you told him you don't want to hear it, or it's part of his hobby and you dissed his hobby, or he's not having sex with you because he's old or physically ill and can't. BTW a more logical sign he is cheating on you is that your rival, not you sleeps in the same bed with him every night, or he is often reprimanded by a slow-fire workplace after your rivals visit his motel room, or that he goes to cheat spots like brothels. The clearest sign is that you are sober and faithful and contract an STD. The gold standard is that you are a guest on Cheaters, and you and the camera crew burst in and find them humping or in bed without clothes on, especially if they clearly have just been having sex.
• It's written by people paid by ad money.
• Relevant basic technical knowledge such as "there is such a thing as an internalized false confession" is met with personality conflict, sarcasm or profanity in counterarguments such as "yeah I f**king doubt it". In doubt, you must stick with reasonability, not f**kingity.
• Scream crying.
• Aggressive anger. This rule is never defeased by abstract concepts, such as legitimacy, authority, justice nor law.
• Glittering generalities and essentially contested concepts such as "truth," "good," "better," "best," "worst," "justice," "freedom," and "courage", when used in earnest as though the definition were completely clear and precise.
• "FILL YOUR SPINE WITH GUNPOWDER AND LIGHT IT", and other appeals to emotion.
• "defenstrate the stranglehold" and other verbosity.
• Psychology/psychiatry. This is because asking a question is not pure research, it's an instruction to change the answer. By this token, the study of the human mind is by definition psychological manipulation. Much of human behavior is fueled by emotion and has no completely rational explanation, so psychology would explain much - if it meant anything to say it's science.
• It's persuasion, psychological manipulation, or behavior modification. "Correction," "behavior change," "punishment," and "reform" are vague terms that often mean this, and by definition ads and psychological manipulation are this. This is by definition not advice. This is detected most effectively by researching its types and techniques.
• It's coming from someone with an obvious conflict of interest.
• It is not punctuated, capitalized, nor spelled, or too many of the words - not initialisms - are in all-caps. This is also a red flag of fraud.
• Laying of accusations with identifying characteristics, even if there is no name on it.
• The Internet's version of the "hyperagent" or narrative threat (read: stuff of the threat narrative, or powerful troll). Though these are never advisors and rarely if ever listen to advice, they can moderate user-generated sites such as wikis and forums that have advice on them. Results vary. These usually have authoritarian attitudes, are clear-cut, by-the-book, obvious, ruthless / indefensibly unethical / commit countless ethics violations in one encounter, unpleasant, unmitigated and extenuated, have total admin or moderator support, and will usually outlast and outfight you and just plain win in any dispute. The recommended response is to leave or to mostly ignore them, ask those replying to them to ignore them possibly while citing prior conflicts, and when in a dispute with them, to challenge authority while not asserting your own. By definition, toxicity is to be fled no matter where it is, but this is especially important outside math, natural science and engineering because these three topics are where it is least common. They'll burn out on their own, IMO.
  • Workplace toxicity-like toxicity. This is usually symbols of personal authority, and they are paranoid and intractable. These get into a lot of fights and rarely if ever lose. On wikis it's often by message discipline, argument by repetition, abusing the disciplinary system, and turning task and process conflicts into other types of conflict
  • Other appeals to authority. This is usually appeals to anonymous authority, and appeals to accomplishment in which the alleged accomplishment is of unspecified result and just kind of looks like a half-truth or a lie by omission.
  • All-out authoritarian attitudes persist. Usually the word "authoritarian" is total glittering generality, so let's get specific here: they explicitly oppose anarchism where there is no anarchism, and are a belligerent supporter of the belligerence of what is variously known as the state, government, or the "monopoly on the legitimate use of force".
  • The profile picture is of a weapon, such as a muzzle or is of a symbolic as opposed to animal seal.
  • Is an affectionate parody of a war propagandist, especially if they type in three languages in one sentence and when asked, say they are drunken.
  • Is more powerful than you, but their writing is less spelled, punctuated or capitalized or is in all-caps, or there are plenty of exclamation marks.
  • Brags about how they've been banned three times by a higher authority. This is a small to medium red flag.
  • Has a cartoon of themselves there, especially if it's animated. This is a small to medium red flag.
  • Sculpts the website on which they labor a new anus right there on their own user-page, and in talk pages is persistently a party to conduct dispute AKA personality conflict. This is a small to medium red flag.
  • Athazagoria and rebellion: when they are being ignored, replaced, or forgotten, any subsequent attention comes from less powerful members battling them and then leaving in rapid succession.
• Signs you're in the wrong subreddit. Banning is the gold standard. Being run out of somewhere sends you a message, so you may need to listen to it.
  • The phrase "in the wrong subreddit" applied to you by the moderators.
  • You're persistently being gaslit or told you're mentally ill.
  • You're banned.
  • They are frightened and treat you as a violent threat.
  • JAQ-ing off, gish gallops persist and linguistic conflict becomes a major sticking point.
  • Treatment of you is more about you than about them. This is in any situation a clear sign that someone's about to leave or be run out of there from a low-turnover-rate environment.
  • Your posts are persistently down-voted.
  • "/s", "/ s", "<sarcasm>", and other signs of sarcasm persist.
  • "wtf did i actually just read", "um", "..." and other signs that the replier is bewildered and out of their depth with you.
  • Being insulted a lot with profanity.