One of the things I do not like about myself is that when people ask for help I offer advice.
And help is better than advice.
If you have ever recruited someone to help you move you know the difference clearly enough. The person who tells you how to pack the truck or why you need to tape up a box more securely may be useful, but the person who just picks things up or does the taping themselves is who you want around.
In my own defense as someone who could help more and better, my work is to advise. Besides, my help is feeble. Once a host sees me operate a knife, I am usually invited to sit at the kitchen table rather than to continue aiding them in any food preparation and my friends know it is in their own self-interest to keep me away from what they need to paint, hammer or saw.
We like to advise, rather than help, I imagine, because words are always easier to spew than action is to take, because we would rather offer our ideas than actually commit to someone else’s plan, and because it satisfies the ego to pretend we speak as if from the podium rather than march in the crowd.
And the online world exacerbates those pitfalls
Presumably, in a real village, the help your neighbor needs is obvious: Fix this wall, shovel the snow, mend this shed. You can help or no.
For an online world to work we need to be able to help one another for real and as more than advice givers, with more than just upvotes and likes, shares, and follows.
What is true politically is true inter-personally as well; help, like change, requires more than a click.