Blocking GPS Signals for Dummies

GPS phone tracker

It's not unusual for one of our research staffers to look at online "tutorials" and mumble something about how this freelancer just plain missed the point. Most of the time it's because the writer wasn't familiar enough with the task, tool, or tech needed to answer the OQ's question. Other times, it's probably because of a lack of imagination. We're pretty certain that in writing "How to Block GPS Signals"¹ for Techwalla.com, Patrick Nelson proved that he doesn't have much of an imagination.

Parallel and Perpendicular Lines for Algebra Dummies

Equations of parallel and perpendicular lines

Many freelancers practice a "trick" that tends to drive the Antisocial Network researchers bonkers. This trick is what's sometimes called the "If you can't dazzle 'em with your brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit!" solution for writing about unfamiliar topics. Well, we found another example of that in today's DotD nominee, Grant D. McKenzie. The aeronautical engineering student chose to write about "How to Write Equations of Parallel & Perpendicular Lines" for eHow.com; the post has since been niched at Sciencing.com.

Cleaning PVC for Dummies

PVC pipe in various sizes

While a few of our DotD nominee's posts were written by people who are supposed to know what they're doing, the vast majority are the output of freelancers who were well and truly lost in terra incognita. We like finding those, at least in part because some of the rubbish they published is downright hilarious. Never mind the egregious math errors or the instructions to use tools no one has ever heard of, though, because sometimes the writer just didn't understand the question. We suspect that Melly Parker should have thought a while longer before she tackled "How to Clean the Inside of a PVC Pipe" for HomeSteady.com.

Sedimentology and Young Earth for Creationist Dummies

Grand Canyon sedimentary rocks

Every few months we stumble over one of our oldest files of potential DotD candidates. Most of the posts listed in the file have already been featured here, although not a few have been deleted by the website – or the website itself has gone belly-up. A few, however, persist; and today's nominee is one such post. Our guest is someone who's been hanging in there at HubPages.com for at least three years. Give a warm welcome, readers, to Lawrence Hebb and "Young earth evidence: the sedimentary rocks."

Laser Levels for Dummy DIYers

One of many laser level types

Our staffers here at the Antisocial Network keep voluminous files of freelance posts that they've flagged as potential DotD nominees. The organization of those files is more or less random, since some are grouped by the candidate's name, some by the site, some by the topic, and many are just added as they're found. Every once in a while, though, we head to the very bottom of the pile and grab something someone found months or even years ago... something like eHowian Greyson Ferguson and the HomeSteady.com post, "How to Use a Laser Level to Check a Floor Level."¹

Volcanoes for Dummies (Again)

volcanoes at spreading center

While the people at Leaf Group were busy moving most of the old eHow.com articles into niches, the people at HubPages.com were apparently up to the same trick. We guess they bought the same SEO study... Whatever the case, they apparently were no more careful about getting it right than the Leafies were. We say that because we found another RickRidesHorses post at Owlcation.com (a HubPages niche), and "What Causes a Volcano to Erupt?" is pretty much as doofus as was his explanation of earthquakes...

Gas Lines for Dummy Installers

residential gas manifold

In our never-ending search for more stupidification of the internet, we regularly run across content farm posts written by people who have only the vaguest, most tangential familiarity with the subject. The posts that claim to be instructions, posted by "professional writers" who have little or no knowledge of the topic, are among the worst. We are reasonably sure that eHow's J. Lang Wood has cooked on a gas stove and benefited from gas water heaters and gas furnaces, but does she know anything about "Installing Natural Gas Lines Into a House"?¹ Based on her HomeSteady.com post, we doubt it...

The Ford F250 for Dummies

When the phrase "pickup truck" is mentioned, people in the western hemisphere are pretty likely to flash on an image of the Ford F-Series. Sure, in the eastern hemisphere, the Toyota HiLux is the vehicle of choice for African and south Asian militias; but here in the States it's Ford. The company sells more than a million of 'em every year, almost entirely in the USA and Canada... which leads us to wonder why some Brit by the name of John London decided he was qualified  to describe "1983 Ford F250 Specifications" for ItStillRuns.com.

Photosynthesis for the Dummy Biology Student

Photosynthesis diagram

It's pretty much an article of faith here at Antisocial Network Headquarters that a disappointing portion of the content written at content farms isn't worth the electrons it's printed on. Way, way, way too much of it was written by people who had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. We're thinking of people like eHowian Alexis Kezirian who, despite her course of study in college, pounded out an answer of sorts to "Is Photosynthesis Endergonic or Exergonic?"¹ at the mother site.

Dented Bat Repair for Dummies

dented softball bat

Several of our staffers are current or former softball players. A few are even old enough to remember a time when the only bats were wood; but even they have been known to use an aluminum bat from time to time. The question of dented bats comes up from time to time. Using one in a sanctioned game is a rule violation, mostly because it could be dangerous. What do you do if your favorite bat is dented? Well, if you believe freelancer Giselle Diamond and her SportsRec.com article "How to Get a Dent out of a Softball Bat," you just take the bat to your favorite auto body shop...

Site Preparation for Dummies

Theodolite used in site preparation

We've long been aware of the short bios eHow.com contributors (now randomly spread over Leaf Group niche sites) and the information they provide. What we can't generally figure out is how the broad experience logged by some of them is relevant to any particular subject. Most are journalists, who are apparently taught in J-school that they can fake knowledge of anything (they can't), but some aren't. Some are like lawyer and biker chick Karen Boyd, who for some unknown reason thought she was qualified to detail "Tools Used in Site Preparation" for Hunker.com.

Overheated Radiators for Dummies

temperature gauge of overheated engine

If there's any truism that our researchers have developed for the niche sites in which the old eHow.com content has been deposited, it's probably that verbosity is the chief cause of misinformation. In case you didn't know, eHow required that their contributors cobble together 300 to 500 words of content for every post. Many topics could have been addressed in just a couple of sentences, and freelancers attempting to pad out an answer on unfamiliar topics often introduced factual errors, That's the case with today's nominee, Elizabeth Punke, and her post "What Causes a Car's Temperature Gauge to Increase?" at ItStillRuns.com.

Sprockets for Dummies

Sprockets on a bicycle 

When it comes to sharing information – the buzzphrase in the '90s was "technology transfer" – we've found that it helps if the sharer knows more about the topic at hand than the sharee. Unfortunately, the balance of knowledge is too often equal or even reversed when penny-grubbing freelancers get involved. For an example, we need look no further than today's DotD nominee, WiseGEEK.com writer Maggie Worth. Her contribution to the stupidification of the internet arrives in the form of the post, "What Is a Sprocket Wheel?" (now at AboutMechanics.com... with editing assistance from Jenn Walker).

Child Bike Safety Tips for Dummies

Kids and Bicycle Safety

One of our founders is an avid cyclist, who regularly rides on a heavily-used rails-to-trails path near his home. In his defense, he avoids it like the plague on weekends... Be that as it may, he's often thought he should set up shop at one of the major intersections with a sign saying, "For $5 I'll teach you how to shift that bike." That probably wouldn't help today's DotD nominee, Gabrielle Applebury, understand her topic better; because she doesn't live nearby. Based on her LoveToKnow.com article, "Bicycle Safety Rules for Kids,"¹ it's highly likely that she also doesn't ride a bicycle anyway.

Ambiguous Tax Questions for Citizen Dummies

We occasionally check over our list of favorite contributors, and we noticed that it had been almost a year since the last time we trotted out one of our more prolific nominees. He's an guy named Tom Lutzenberger, who spread his peculiar form of misinformation across a wide variety of categories during his time at eHow.com. Whether it's plumbing, mining, the oil industry, or HVAC; Tom's there to muddy the infowaters. Given that the guy has an MBA, though, you'd think that he'd get the answer to "When Can You Start Filing Taxes?"¹ right for PocketSense.com... but you'd be wrong.

Wiring a Chandelier for the Dummy Electrician

end-of-run switch wiring

As is so often the case, today's DotD nominee stuck her foot in her metaphorical mouth so blatantly that one of our staffers was able to spot evidence of incompetence in her chosen "how-to" task immediately. Given that the article "How to Wire a Chandelier"¹ at HomeSteady.com is 402 words long (it has to be at least 300 to meet Demand Media's minimum word count), the presence of a sentence of amazing stupidity near the very middle shouldn't stand out... but Laura Hageman somehow made sure it did!

Plumbing Supplies for DIY Dummies

The parts of a toilet

On the reference shelf of the Antisocial Network headquarters library you can find a copy of an interesting reference work, "The McMillan Visual Dictionary." Instead of long, wordy discussions of hundreds of everyday items, this dictionary includes thousands of labelled drawings. Some show the different parts of an item; such as the parts of a single-hung window; while others show varieties of an object, such as the many different types of shoes. Something like this must be how Elizabeth Punke "researched" her Homesteady.com post, "How to Identify Plumbing Parts."

Mortise Lock Conversion, the Dummies Version

Note lip on body of mortise lock

Although the vast majority of our DotD candidates claim to be "professional writers" or bloggers (at least the ones from eHow.com), some also allow as to having other careers. Take today's nominee, returning eHowian Mark Morris, Although a professional writer (of course) and a "college perfesser," Morris also claims fifteen years as a carpenter. If all his carpentry work is as clueless as his instructions for "How to Convert Mortise Locks"¹ (a Hunker.com presentation), some houses in Oklahoma are probably falling apart...

Pet Doors for DIY Dummies

If there's one form of so-called freelance online "how-to" posts that tends to give our research staffers hives, it's the bait-and-switch job. To some extent we can understand it when a freelancer doesn't know enough to write instructions – understand it, but not forgive it. But when someone who claims relevant expertise pulls this trick, it definitely puts the BS in Bait and Switch. That's precisely what we have on our plate for today: LoveToKnow.com contributor Amy Whittle says she going to show us "How to Build a Pet Door"¹... but does she?

Gas Stoves for Kitchen Dummies

What "black tube," Laura?

A friend recently had a major kitchen remodel performed on his house. The contractor who did the work flat-out refused to do the dryer and stove hookups because both were gas appliances. While that meant that our friend was faced with hiring a plumber to do the hookups or do it himself, he appreciated the honesty. He ended up doing it himself. After all, he's pretty handy, and he's done it before. That makes him a lot different from eHowian Laura Hageman, who pretended she was similarly handy when she wrote "How to Hook Up a Gas Stove"¹ at HomeSteady.com.

Crystal Growth for Dummies

No light here, Megan...

One of the Antisocial Network staffers once spent a tortured semester as a fifth-grade teacher. We've seen her pull out those teaching tricks many a time, and one of our favorites is what she calls the reasonableness test. Take, for instance a barista making change: if you give him a twenty for your low-fat soy-milk mocha-latte and he gives back two tens in your change, he should realize something isn't reasonable. The same should have applied to eHowian Megan Shoop (and her content editor) when attempting to explain "The Best Growing Conditions for Crystals" at Sciencing.com.

6-volt or 12-volt, the Dummy Question

multi-voltage battery charger

If, as you've probably heard before, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing"; what sort of thing is zero knowledge? Well, readers, today we're going to find out. Someone once asked google, "How to Charge a 12 Volt [sic] Battery on a 6 Volt [sic] Setting." Demand Media scraped up the question and one of their crack contributors attempted to address it at OurPastimes.com. The problem was that Beverley Benham had no idea what she was talking about...

Hydraulic Lifters for Mechanical Dummies

Hydraulic Lifter Diagram

It should come as no surprise that we run across a surprising number of eHow.com posts written by people who'd never even heard of the question before they "answered" it. We don't know about you, but we rather doubt that someone with exactly the same amount of knowledge about a topic – if that much – can give us the answer we want when we're doing research. Here's an example: freelancer Regina Paul attempting to explain, "How Do Hydraulic Valve Lifters Work?"¹ for Hunker.com.

Bicycle Gear for the Dummy Shopper

Every once in a while we run across yet another wannabe content farm. In the post-Panda era, the "crops" at these farms tend to be almost unreadable because of an excess of ads, but that's not their worst trait. Sadly, although many of the world's freelancers are happy to earn 20¢ a day for all their articles, native English speakers aren't. That's very likely why Bubblews was overrun by Filipino teenagers. But on point: today, we feature a writer from a hitherto untapped site, SooperArticles.com: he's Alex Simba, and he penned "Let' [sic] Have a Look on [sic] Essential Cycling Accessories."

Power Ports for Dummies

12-volt power outlet for car

You probably have to be of a certain age to remember when cars had cigarette lighters. We think they stopped being standard equipment sometime in the '80s, but sockets that sure look like cigarette lighters reappeared a few years later as 12-volt power ports for charging mobile devices. These day there are never enough such outlets, so people can be forgiven for wanting to know how to add a new one or replace one that seems to have malfunctioned. The problems is that some old fart googled "How to Install a New Cigarette Lighter In a Car," and eHowian Greyson Ferguson decided to oblige (see his work at ItStillruns.com).

Sharpening an Axe for the Dummy Logger

sharpened ax head

It was only a day or two ago that we lamented the freelancers who don't know enough about their chosen how-to topic to tell the OQ, "Don't do it!" We figured things couldn't get worse than that, but apparently they can. Today's nominee, eHow.com's Michelle Raphael, not only didn't say not to do it, she became confused and made matters worse. It all happened in a post with the unlikely title, "How to Sharpen an Axe with a Grinder" at eHow.com, what we generally term "the mother site," because it's the mother lode of internet dumbassery...

Glaciation for the Dummy Geology Student

Extent of continental glaciation, eastern US

While most of our DotD winners barfed up their freelance dumbassery at a single site¹, a few spread their largesse over a larger area. Several can be found at both HubPages.com and the former eHow.com niches, but today's nominee is the first we've caught operating out of both eHow and WiseGreed... err, WiseGEEK. Here's our exposé of the scientifically incompetent Michael Smathers with his WiseGEEK-style answer to the question, "What Is Glaciation?" at AllThingsNature.com (a WiseGEEK niche site).

Wiring Duplex Switches for the Dummy DIY Electrician

The research staffers here at the Antisocial Network run across an amazing amount of internet dumbassery in their quest for DotD candidates. They find mistakes, misinterpretations, and downright fakery; all spread across the net in the interest of collecting a few pennies. Today's candidate claimed that she specializes in "home improvement" articles at "various online publications." When it came to explaining to her Hunker.com readers "How to Wire a Double Switch to Two Separate Lights,¹ though, Cecilia Harsch was definitely not helping them. Why anyone would suspect a nurse's aide and Mary Kay rep knows much about the electrical code is beyond us...

MDF Cabinets for the Dummy Cabinetmaker

Why you don't use edge screws in MDF

Every once in a while our research team runs across a how-to question to which anyone who understands the situation would simple say, "Don't do it." Sadly, at the mother lode of misinformation (the sites formerly known as eHow.com, now spread out across a bunch of niche sites) people who understood the situation were in short supply. That's why someone named Katherine Barrington ran with the question "How to Build a Kitchen Cabinet with MDF," now at HomeSteady.com.

Post Holes and Tree Roots for the Dummy Fencer

roots in post hole

We are never certain whether the people we nominate for DotD thought they were performing a public service with their freelance posts or knew darned well they were spreading the information equivalent of manure on the internet. In some cases, we think we know, but you can't be sure. In the case of today's nominee, eHowian Debbie Tolle, we'd like to think that she's a garden-variety dumbass; but maybe that psychology MS just didn't apply to the Hunker.com post, "How to Dig Holes in Tree Roots for Fence Posts."