Tightening a Screw for DIY Dummies

The Torx: neither Phillips nor slotted

No matter how simple (some might say "stupid") the question, you can pretty much bet that some penny-hungry freelancer, somewhere, has managed to post an online answer to it; even something as dirt simple as how one might change a light bulb. Yep, these are people who believe, with near-religious fervor, the misquote attributed to H. L. Mencken: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public."* You know they're out there: why else would freelancer Chris Simon have posted to eHow.com the completely moronic "How to Tighten Screws"? Or perhaps a better question should be, just why on earth would Simon think that there is someone out there (above the age of four) who doesn't know how to use a screwdriver? Because he wanted his ten or fifteen bucks from eHow, that's why...

Now we won't argue that Simon's instructions are "wrong": after all, he "instructs" his readers to plug in the screwdriver and turn it clockwise (righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, you know). No duh, huh? We might quibble a bit at Chris's naive belief that there are only two kinds of screws, Phillips and flat head, even though there are a lot of other kinds (hex drive, square drive, Torx® drive, lobe drive...); but apparently he lacks the experience to know about such "aberrant" types. No, our problem with Chris's "answer" is that he didn't answer the actual question: everyone, Simon's detailed instructions notwithstanding, knows how to stick a screw into a pilot hole and turn the screwdriver to the right. What a lot of people don't know is how to tighten a screw that's reamed out the pilot hole and worked its way loose.

We know someone who has plenty of experience with that problem (it happens a lot in homes with cheap kitchen cabinets) and has published a fairly extensive list of solutions he has used himself. That guy's a resource. On the other hand, Chris Simon (not to mention the eHow content editor who let this bull get published) is completely deserving of the Dumbass of the Day award the Antisocial Network crew would give him. Assuming, that is, he knows how to screw the plaque to the wall...

* Mencken's actual words are, "No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

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