Advice column or WEB OF LIES?

As someone who has written a letter to Miss Manners, Dear Abby, and Annie's Mailbox and had it answered in two of the three columns (although not in the same week), I am sure that the asker just sent the same question to all three columns. The editing really varies by site -- my letter was still recognizable as mine in both cases, but people reading them in different weeks on different sites probably would not have correlated them the way you've done here. (In my case, the answers were the same -- DTMFA -- and if I'd had AskMeFi back then, I wouldn't have needed their advice or their editing.)

According to http://www.missmanners.com/home/about-miss-manners.html?start=1, she writes an additional column for MSN, as well as the syndicated one. So the fact that the column appears only on MSN doesn't matter. Brainmouse's suggestion is plausible, since it is a remarkable question.

When I was in college, I was editor of the student paper and we had an advise column. And let me just tell you that College students have some of the most boring problems imaginable. Well, at least the ones willing to air their dirty laundry. What questions we used were either reworded to be more interesting, made up out of whole cloth, or on a rare occasion, stolen and reworded from other advice columns (such as Dear Abby or the syndicate advice column we didn't use because of the heavy handed Christian message) because our columnist felt she could answer it better for our target audience. Obviously it's the same question reworded. It's possible that one person sent the question to both of them. The columns do not share a syndicate, so it's unlikely that the question was shared that way.

It hadn't even occurred to me that the same person might ask the question twice. I suppose it's possible. Weird that they'd edit them like that, though.

I heard an interview with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Dickinson a while ago that discussed her inheritance of Ann Landers' job. If I remember correctly, it also discussed the subculture of folks that write in to advice columnists, including their creation of fake and duplicate questions.

This http://www.creators.com/advice/dear-margo/really-bad-luck-cruising-and-coming-up-with-your-father-in-law.html http://lifestyle.msn.com/messageboards/thread.aspx?board=00000065-012b-0000-0000-000000000000&thread=00000065-0000-0000-517d-140000000000 http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/salon-slate-advice-columns-get-same-fake-letter_b5030. Either the old or new Prudie (I think) wrote a short piece on the "same letter" problem once. Basically, she noted that though hundreds of letters come in, few need little editing and are appropriate for publishing. And, as you know since you're one of those people, many people who read advice columns read (and submit to) more than one. Can't fined the piece right now, but I'll have another google in a moment.

*fined = find

If I were that asker of advice and, say, submitted my letter to Dear Abby first, I have to admit that I would probably seek advice a second time. Dear Abby's response is essentially DTMFA and, since from the way my question is written I clearly don't want to end the relationship, I would then want to hear something that validated my choice to stay with "Mac" from an equivalent source--so I'd send the letter to Miss Manners. Just a theory.

I've seen the same letter run in Dear Abby and Annie's Mailbox (the new continuation of the Ann Landers column) a few times before, and also assumed that the writer was just sending the letter multiple places.