There is nothing on the internet I love more than a good advice column. I’m an hour late to writing this piece because, in thinking about writing a column about advice columns, I got distracted and clicked through to read a few of my regulars. (Today alone: Heather Havrilesky’s Dear Polly, Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s Dear Prudence, Carvell Wallace and Nicole Cliffe’s Care and Feeding; on a regular basis, Cheryl Strayed’s The Sweet Spot, Alison Green’s Ask a Manager, Lori Gottlieb’s Ask a Therapist, Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Ethicist, Philip Galanes’s Social Q’s, and my Chani Nichols horoscope for good measure. Sometimes I’ll throw in an Ask Amy or Carolyn Hax for variety). And judging by the proliferation of advice online, I’m far from the only person who finds it soothing to read about other people’s problems, and to see what an editor-appointed expert has to say.

Advice columns have been popular for years, and in the modern era have become largely aspirational, researcher Elyse Vigiletti told advice columnist Alison Green. “Mass culture’s internet literacy is at an all-time high, now that the internet has been around a while,” she said. “We as a mass audience are well trained to crowdsource our problems among strangers, to strive to put our best selves out into the world. Dashing off a letter to an advice columnist is as easy as dashing off a tweet or email to our boss, and sharing their responses is as easy and cathartic as sharing an inspirational quote on a stock photo sunset background.”

I suspect that, at this particular political moment, many of us are craving some good low-stakes interpersonal drama

Which explains why so many people write in to advice columnists. But why do the rest of us read them so insatiably? It’s not like most of the advice column readership comes from people Googling answers to their specific problems. I would guess it comes from repeat tourists and regular gawkers like me. And we’re having our fix met by an ever-growing list of advisers. Slate, New York Magazine and the New York Times have a solid dozen advice columnists between them, most of them white women, most of them politically progressive. The days of Dear Abby as the lone (or at least loudest) voice of reason are long gone.

I suspect that, at this particular political moment, many of us are craving some good low-stakes interpersonal drama. Perhaps something easily understandable that can distract us and animate us but doesn’t actually matter at all feels particularly cathartic at a moment when so many of us are on news overload, and it feels like the fundamentals of our nation hang in the balance.

I read advice columns as much for the problems as the advice. After perusing New York Times headlines that detail the criminal syndicate currently occupying the White House, highlight the disastrous choices that are permanently changing our climate and destroying the Earth, and largely suggest the impending end of the republic, if not the world, it’s an enormous relief to read a letter from a woman who should definitely call off her wedding or a man who should absolutely phone his local animal rescue about the abused dog next door. There aren’t many other places where it’s easy to find simple problems for which there are clear solutions.

And it’s almost more cathartic to read a letter from someone thoroughly unsympathetic – a judgmental mother-in-law upset that her parenting advice isn’t being heeded; a guy who loves his girlfriend but; a jealous and snooping partner; a bride upset she didn’t get more gifts from her wedding guests. These letter-writers offer a sweet spark of harmless outrage: a reader can shake their head at the writers’ selfishness or inappropriate behavior without any urge (or ability) to publicly and performatively call them out on Twitter. They also offer up problems that are inconsequential enough that, unlike the problems plaguing American politics, there’s no nagging but unrequited desire to do something about them.

Of course, my fixation on advice columns began when there was nary a gold glimmer of Donald Trump in politics. But I’ve noticed that, since the 2016 election, they’ve become my online safe space – a warm little cave to disappear into when I need a break from reading the heavy stuff. I’m always hoping for a really insane problem – although little has topped 2012’s incest twins – and find myself comforted by the fact that, Trump or not, life goes on, with people who are just as petty, grasping, bizarre, duplicitous, and sensitive as ever. The president may be an unindicted criminal conspirator, but James and his wife have a sexless marriage that he blames on her post-pregnancy weight gain, but is probably really because he does the dishes and she spends her evenings simmering in a low-flame rage. Now there’s a problem all of us can get our heads around and pick a side on.

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And there’s also the moral superiority. The problem is ridiculous, petty, or of the writer’s own making? Dude, you don’t know what real problems are. The problem is significant or actually sad? Boy am I glad that’s not my life.

With some columnists – Strayed, Havrilesky – the warmth comes less from the comfort of satisfyingly petty or truly wacky problems, than from reading advice from women who are fundamentally compassionate and have the writing chops to fold in stories from their own lives to the advice they dole out. Rarely do I recognize myself in the letters they answer – but still, reading them is like observing someone else’s therapy session: not directly relevant, but full of interesting questions and valuable tools one can take to heart and repurpose for one’s own life. When so much of the internet, and social media in particular, is so mean and bad-finding – Twitter feels like the space people now go to find something to get mad about – writers who approach other humans with empathy, generosity, and toughness where necessary feel like a necessary scrub-down.

In other words, advice columns aren’t just for letter-writers who aspire to be more like the advisers; they’re as much (if not more) for the nosy spectators finding respite in reading about the humbler problems, the feelings, and the relationships all of us have: friendship, love, work, family. An opportunity to make insignificant and unenforceable rulings on the intimate lives of strangers sure beats seeking release from the anxiety caused by impending fascism and global doom we each feel largely powerless to stop.