For the last several months, about once a week, I’ve posted a question on my Instagram story offering advice to anyone who asks. Each time I get between 25 and 50 responses from people telling me about their problems. With a character limit of just 85 characters, I get questions such as “how do I breakup with my boyfriend and tell him I like girls?,” “how should I come out as trans to my toxic male best friend?,” and, of course, “how do I get the corn demon to stop chasing me?”. For most answers I pair my response with an absurd photograph or illustration, which I find helps lighten the mood and draw attention to how small and silly even the most serious of problems are.
I answer as many of these questions as I can, but my response is limited to the size of a single Instagram story. These micro exchanges are a genuine highlight of my week, and despite my repeated insistence that I have zero qualifications to run an advice column, people keep coming back and reading and asking questions. Last week I was able to answer 20 out of 48 questions and the column received about 1,000 readers. It’s readership is only continuing to grow.
So, with the rising popularity of the Dear Lithium advice column, I have decided to expand its scope a little bit and add on a standard, full length advice column. I’m sure I’m not the only transsexual gender fuck running an advice column, however I think I have a fun and unique angle. People know me as the admin of a medium sized transgender Instagram meme page. I am primarily interacting with a population of trans and queer people that are reading shitposts online in their free time. This feels different to me than folks who are reading advice columns on Them or Slate.
I think who I am and what my qualifications are in these exchanges don’t really matter. There’s nothing I can say that should be able to convince anyone that I give decent advice. I encourage everyone to remember that I’m just a girl* and that I don’t know a whole lot. I like to point people back into their own experiences and to encourage them to draw their own conclusions, something I’ve learned from a few of my teachers along my way. How is fear influencing us? What does kindness mean?
I hope you enjoy the column. I’m looking forward to writing it.
*not a girl