India, Sept. 28 -- "It is my misfortune to be red-haired...I love a lady that has the greatest aversion imaginable to that colored hair...What should I do?" "Is it possible for one woman to love another as passionately and constantly as if the love were between different sexes?" We do this a lot, don't we? Lay our messy, bizarre and intimate secrets bare before absolute strangers, hoping they will know just what we need? We share our thoughts in newspaper and magazine columns, on Subreddits such as r/AITA, on Quora feeds, and now with AI chatbots. We've been doing this for far longer than we realise. Since at least 1691, in fact. That's when the Athenian Mercury, a twice-weekly London broadsheet run by the bookseller John Dunton, began fill...