“What is the cause of the winds, and whence do they come, and whither do they go?” – that’s one of the questions from the earliest iteration of the advice column, a 17th-century London newspaper called The Athenian Mercury. It’s proof that seeking advice from strangers is an act that far predates the Am I the Asshole subreddit thread. Since 1691, at least, people have been asking strangers how to meet a potential partner, why some people hate olives, how to handle tense relationships with in-laws, if it’s “proper for women to be learned”, and even what love is. While the earliest advice columns were written by men, reinforcing traditional visions of white masculinity and femininity, by the 19th century, the advice column was re-imagined by women’s magazines as a conversation between friends. Then, the emergence of internet forums, social media groups and chat rooms made everyone and anyone an advice giver and receiver. 

Today, people in TikTok comments and Reddit threads are rarely asking about the cause of the wind – there’s Google for that. In the lifestyle space, advice-seeking often has a formula: I want to level up my life in some way, how can I do it? Howevere, in recent years there has been a concerning shift to actively avoid all expert advice, to defer to public opinion on how to get the fastest, most extreme results (this shift has permeated across online culture and spaces, but we’ll stick to lifestyle for now). Take the “unhinged” hack trend on TikTok, for example, where people ask for the most “unhinged way” that people have achieved a goal, like moving in with a partner, dealing with a co-worker, getting over a hangover or managing ADHD without medication.

The search for advice online is no longer for rounded, reasonable advice but for an obscure hack that few people have heard of. “How do I lose weight?” is now “Tell me your most unhinged weight loss hack”. The approach has spanned across weight loss forums on Reddit, where people share ED-coded advice for slimming down. “What moisturiser should I use?” has become “Ladies, I need your most unhinged beauty hacks” and “How do I save money?” is now “Tell me the most diabolical, irrational, disturbing satanic ways of getting rich”. (Notably, the unchecked advice is often still geared towards women.) In the comments, people share equally strange suggestions, like “I convinced myself going under 800 in my bank meant I was gonna die”, “I cut off half my family and now any time I talk to any of them I get like €50 per convo” or “Honestly, starving saved me a lot”. 

While it may feel like a personal act, advice has long been a spectator sport. With the internet as the new playing field, the more extreme the advice is, the better it performs. This, says Kaitlyn Regehr, a professor of digital humanities at University College London, is because of the financial structures that govern social media. “We’re not actually the consumers of social media; we are the product, or rather, our time and attention are the product being sold to advertisers,” she says. In the attention economy, anything that attracts attention (hate, harm, disinformation and more extreme content) is prioritised in the algorithm because it holds us there longer. Aside from fueling political polarisation – with YouTube recommendations leading users down a rabbit hole of extremist political content – this tendency towards the extreme is also impacting how we perceive our day-to-day lives and relationships. 

Lack of community is, no doubt, shaping our advice-seeking habits online. While sharing and asking for serious advice used to be reserved for close friendships and family, young people are now lonelier than ever, making ChatGPT or online advice forums an appealing alternative to actual friendship and community. “In recent times, societies composed of families have become increasingly nuclear and are not engaging at the family, social and community levels,” says Soumya Awasthi, a fellow at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. “There is a crumbling value system, ethos, and a lack of checks and balances in interpersonal relations.” Even when we are finding community online, we’re engaging in echo chambers that strengthen beliefs and reject diverse viewpoints. “Nuance is often forgone in favour of viral outrage,” says Awasthi.

There is a crumbling value system, ethos, and a lack of checks and balances in interpersonal relations... Nuance is often forgone in favour of viral outrage

Extreme content itself may also not appear extreme at first glance: whether it’s extreme wealth, an extreme opinion or something extremely funny. “It may just be that you’re constantly consuming other people’s beautiful kitchens that you can afford, and that makes you feel shit,” says Regehr. As we continue to be algorithmically offered or fed content through recommendations, instead of actively searching out, Clive Thompson, a longtime writer on technologies and author of Coders, says advice on the internet has gone from being fairly commonsensical or tame to advice that pushes buttons. “A calm world would reward realistic advice, stuff that you can actually act on, right?” he says. But newer, popular algorithms, like TikTok’s, rely less on building creators’ profiles and supplying calm, regular updates and more on one-and-done, extremely uncalm viral videos.

The word “advice” should be applied loosely when it comes to strangers on the internet, with algorithmic extremism skewing our perception of what constitutes as advice worth giving and taking. Thompson says we’ve entered further into the realm of advice being more entertainment than practical (although, to some degree, reading advice columns was always entertainment). “It is almost some sort of meta-commentary on advice itself and on the absurdity of everyday life,” he says. “There can’t be no effect to this, but how much, I don’t know: we have a 2000-year-old history of being convinced the media is about to mind program us into becoming completely unreasonable weirdos.” This is true for everything from romance novels, photographs and the sensationalist newspaper headlines of the past to AI technology today. 

If we’re aware of humans’ tendency to conflate new technology with danger, it’s hard to gauge an accurate measure of just how impactful extreme advice is online. William Brady, an assistant professor at Northwestern University, says it heavily depends on the question or topic being discussed. “Asking about a mundane relationship problem may be inconsequential, but other things like medical advice are very concerning,” he says. “Most people might watch it because they think it’s funny, but what if it has billions of views and even 10 per cent of people think, ‘Oh, that’s an interesting idea’, and there are billions of views – that could actually lead to non-trivial outcomes.” We’re seeing this play out across the beauty, wellness and fitness industries, where misinformation is not only rife but has the potential to result in severe consequences. 

Awasthi believes that governments and tech companies should treat algorithmic extremism as a form of “invisible, pervasive and corrosive socio-digital pollution”. But if we sit back and wait for tech execs to do something, we may be waiting forever. Writer Cory Doctorow has spoken (and written) extensively about how social media companies squash smaller competitors to maintain their monopoly position, so new antitrust laws could be a practical way to shake things up algorithmically. “[Social media companies] are literally there just to harvest your attention like locusts, and they have no civic obligation beyond that,” says Thompson. “That model is at the heart of it, so the only way you’d ever see a situation where that isn’t a problem is when that business model is taken away.” Two examples of this are long-form podcasts and newsletters, with a model you have to actively opt into to receive. “The business model produces much smarter, more substantive results there,” adds Thompson. 

As you come across life, health, work or relationship advice while scrolling, there are many red flags to watch out for. “Extreme content often uses emotionally charged language, oversimplifies complex issues and presents binary, us-versus-them narratives,” says Awasthi. But, still, it’s not always obvious. If you value nuanced opinions, it’s worth getting on the offence by deliberately engaging with a wide span of content and following a range of voices. Instead of using likes and engagement as a measure of whether something is good advice, have a conversation with the person next to you. “Extreme voices are overrepresented, showing up in algorithms that make them seem more prevalent than they really are,” says Regehr. “We should, as often as possible, be sharing the content we consume with those in our lives that we trust.” Yes, that means opening your For You page and scrolling through it with a friend – “unhinged” advice and all.