Why I Do Not Share Advice Online

I enjoy understanding and analyzing issues in-depth, both for the security industry and more broadly. I do some individual stock picking in my free time, mostly as a relatively low-stakes way to perform research on different companies and I enjoy the research process.

I have decided that I want to start taking my blog in a more opinion-oriented direction. After a multi-year spell of trying to write content, and never really getting into it, I have found that I enjoy writing security analysis pieces. While I call it opinion, most of my posts start out as simply analysis, and evolve as I become more familiar with the issues. I am constantly reevaluating my positions, and I recognize that every circumstance is unique. I have, with posts that I have published and not published, led to a different conclusion than I thought I would end up when I started writing.

I am nothing more than a college student who likes understanding the world, and wants to document my understandings for other people to see.

With this in mind, nothing that I say on my blog or to a group should be taken as advice. I will usually talk about my own experience and world view, but will never directly recommend that someone do something, unless I am very familiar with who my audience will be.

There are two kinds of advice online: advice that is too specific to be valuable to every reader, and advice that is too general to be valuable to any reader.

There are two kinds of advice online: advice that is too specific to be valuable to every reader, and advice that is too general to be valuable to any reader. Even if I can make approximations of what a typical audience for a post or website might be, I cannot guarantee it.

When I give advice, I stand behind my belief that it is the right option for the audience's situation. I am abundantly clear in my disclaimers, attached to every piece of content I publish (linked at the bottom of my blog, on the first slide of my presentations, and available at beave.rs/disclaimer) that I "make no representation about the content and suitability of this information for any purpose."

Since I cannot establish an audience with certainty for my blog, I find it difficult to offer specific advice on my blog. I will always try to phrase it as talking about personal experience or personal hypotheticals, but I may not be 100% perfect with that objective. If anything comes across like it may be advice, please do not treat it as such. Anything I publish online should be treated as a discussion of personal experience or opinion, and nothing more.

The purpose of writing this post, and my phrasing throughout my posts, is to protect the integrity of advice when I actually do offer it (to an individual or a small group). So, if you enjoy my writings, feel free to consider it as a data point of a larger decision, but please make decisions on your own. You know much more about yourself than I do.

Thank you for visiting my site, and I hope you stick around!