| abstract | - I have some advice for you, so listen carefully. Never, ever give anyone advice. Doing so can only ever end badly for almost everyone involved. Instructions are just as bad. Invariably, one of the following will happen:
* You're giving advice to The Ditz or Cloudcuckoolander. Your advice may be perfectly sound, but they are ultimately incapable of acting on it in a logical manner. They may take a euphemism used in the explanation, or a sarcastic reply to one or more questions they raised before or after, literally; or they could take something more normal and make it something completely abstract.
* Perhaps they are capable of understanding, but you or they have overestimated their ability. At step 3 in your seven-step plan, they'll measure something incorrectly and won't catch it until the whole thing blows up in their face. Or, alternately, you may have been giving them advice on the proper method to moving heavy equipment, not realizing that all the method in the world won't make up for their physical weakness when the equipment falls on them. Or they could just be jinxed.
* A vital piece of information may be missing. You might have thought you heard the whole story when you hadn't and given advice based on that, which can result in flawed instructions or an unnecessarily hurtful tirade aimed at someone you assumed was a Jerkass. Alternately, something that went without saying for you or had been well-learned from your own experience might be conspicuously missing for them; this version in particular inspires some interesting anecdotes.
* Perhaps the person you were giving advice to is someone who you ought not have. Maybe they're the villain and you don't know it yet. Maybe you're the villain and you don't know it yet. Maybe your ultimate goals are simply mutually exclusive. Maybe you're in direct competition, and you figure they're no threat anyway so you might as well be a Friendly Enemy. In any event, the information you give them will, invariably, result in your defeat at their hands. It doesn't matter if the advice happens to be "it's Istanbul, not Constantinople", it will get you killed. Er, if potential death was ever a factor, at least.
* Or, maybe you're not the one originally giving the advice. Maybe you're relaying a message from another advice-giver. But, unfortunately, something has been lost in translation, or only fits in a certain context. You obviously can't clarify for the recipient, so if these differences change the message significantly, you're out of luck. On a related note, if you're sending such a message through someone else, you should take care that the deliverer is trustworthy, and preferably also that he doesn't know what the message is; if he acts on information intended for someone else entirely, that could throw things out of whack. So don't just go telling someone whatever you think will solve their problems. It usually won't, at least not the way you want it to. Examples of Advice Backfire include:
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