Why I don't give out generic exercise advice

I used to give out a few "tidbits" of advice to non-clients... but not anymore. This is probably one thing that frustrates people in my gym more than anything else. They ask me some questions about training and I won't give them a direct answer - it's for their own good. I get questions all the time like:

"What exercise is best for burning fat."

or

"Which exercise is best if I want Hyuuuuge Guns?"

Then of course, there's my favorite question so far:

"I'm trying to loose weight; which product in the vending machine over there is going to help me burn fat."

That one almost made me cry.

So why do I not give people direct answers? Because general advice can be really dangerous when you don't look at the whole picture. If I tell some guy that doing full ROM squats is great for building big legs, and then later on I find out he was squatting with a hyper-flexed lumbar spine (a very bad thing), guess who's to blame? An example of serious lumbar flexion in the squat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oP9QwB5GL4

Now on occasion, for friends and people that I trust, I might give out a bit of advice because I know their history. Obviously if someone in my gym is about to injure themselves, I'll help them out. Context is king. A great exercise or methodology may be fine for one person and horrible for the next. This is the reason that I perform a thorough evaluation of every person that trains with me. After all, if you think you should get the advice for nothing, then you don't think it's worth anything. If it's not worth anything should you listen to it? People pay thousands of dollars to "pimp out" their cars, they pay hundreds for a lawyer to file a few documents, but they don't want to invest any money in developing a healthy physique... changing their life for the better...