What makes a good column about friendship?

Lindsay Beyerstein thinks the Double X friendship expert is a sociopath — but, interestingly, fails to denounce her as an anti-feminist, even though she thinks Double X is full of anti-feminists. She cites a particular item of advice — from Lucinda Rosenfeld — which essentially says toughen up and quit crying about how your friends aren't good enough friends. Plus, Rosenfeld has a background in unsentimental writing about friendship:

Before taking the gig at Double-X, Rosenfeld produced a substantial body of anti-friend literature, including a novel about friends who despise each other (the official website even lets you stick pins in a flash voodoo doll!). She's also the author of How to Dump a Friend (2001) and Our Mutual Friend: how to steal friends and influence people (2004).

But who would want to read a column that simply counseled people in the obvious? You should be a good and caring friend — which Beyerstein hastens to tell us she sure is. Beyerstein acknowledges that the advice she'd give the letter writer (whose friends abandoned her when she was in need) would be boring. So you'd have to find a different letter to write about, wouldn't you?

You have to come up with something surprising for the column to be readable. Here's the Rosenfeld column in question. Not that I'm interested in reading advice columns, but I do think female friendships are a fascinating subject for incisive analysis. It's a feminist topic, but I'd like some analysis that's scarily honest and unlubricated by feminist treacle.