“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”
– George Carlin
Writing shallow self-help volumes is the last refuge of the soi-disant expert who hasn’t managed to crank out a livelihood doing anything more useful.
The genre rose with the Human Potential Movement and is still around to give us an endless litany of reasons to be miserable. If you want to improve your circumstances and adjust to these times, try developing some skepticism.
Self-help has always been a fat target for pranksters and satirists. One wily redditor carries on the tradition by creating his own glaring fakes and sneaking them into bookstores alongside the “legitimate” titles. Have a look! Is there really much of a difference?
So far, the top comment reads, “Joke’s on you. You have people interested in these books that want to buy them.”