What kind of impact do the fluther answers have on people?

Depends on the person asking I suppose. If they are gullible and malleable enough to do whatever is told to them then it could have a negative impact. The asker needs to have the wisdom to choose between good advice and bad advice and take everything with a grain of salt from their shaker… knowing that only they know the whole story.

I think people in general fall into several camps: those who are bewildered about a given situation, those who want confirmation that they should trust their instincts, and those who want to vent.

I tend to think that most of the older jellies can filter out what sounds like good advice from bad. With adolescents, it may be harder but sometimes they need the other voices that we lend the most. I tend to either not answer the adolescent questions if I have nothing to contribute or temper my advice with more gentleness.

i believe it has a good impact on most people but i also agree on what others said, if somebody is willing to believe what ever they hear it can have a bad impact.

So far though i think fluther is a wonderful idea and if people understand there are different sides to the story it will have a good impact, it all depends on the person really.

Personally, I view Fluther as my unbiased sounding board. If I ask a personal question on Fluther, it’s because I know that I will get for the most part honest, unbiased as it pertains to me personally answers. There are times that you really need to hear the hard truth, not be coddled and told what you want to hear. I have gotten some great advice from the jellies, and I try to do my part to give back in the same way.

It depends on the question. We can’t be blamed for other’s actions. We offer the best advice we can, and it’s up to the question-asker to decide what they will do with that advice. They know coming in we aren’t a board of the world’s leading experts on everything, just a bunch of people with different experiences. But we still should do the best we can, and not purposely mislead people.

I have changed some of my opinions because of others’ answers.

I think it depends. A lot of times we will just do what we want, we just like to see an outsider’s opinion (and argue ;D )

I enjoy seeing the different approaches to each question. The personal relationship questions might be from someone who is writing a book, rather than a person actually experiencing it, I always try to give as good an answer as I can.

Providing food for thought.

I agree with @mattbrowne. I think fluther entertains us, especially those of us who like to chew an issue to death. I think we do learn a lot, although not necessarily the answers to our questions. Often, my questions seem to go in different ways than I was hoping for, and anyway, I ask questions to find out how other people behave, and I generally get a lot of good information about that.