Ceiling Fan Installation for Dummies

Ceiling fan bracket

Sometimes the Antisocial Network selection team must read a potential nominee quite carefully to find the dumbassery necessary to make the case. Other times it's like being slapped in the face with a wet fish. Serial DotD Marissa Wilson wrote dozens of posts at eHow.com back in the day, many she wrote that were ostensibly about health are long gone. We're most concerned about the ones that remain, however, in particular those that deal with DIY topics and home repair... posts like "How to Install a Ceiling Fan in a Manufactured Home" at HomeSteady.com.

Marissa logged five DotD nominations in 2018 before Leaf Group realized she was totally incompetent and started removing anything with her byline. A few of her more innocuous-sounding topics remain, but we suspect that's temporary.

We won't go into great detail about the stupidity inherent in her post, but we would like to share some of her more... bogus information, starting with this "tip":

"A ceiling fan is easier to install in a manufactured home than a conventional home because the electrician already has installed the wires for the light switches and ceiling lights."

We honestly don't know where Wilson got that rubbish, but we think she believed that because her reference (for installing a ceiling fan in a mobile home) said to start by removing an existing light fixture. Apparently Marissa didn't stop to think that the same would hold true for a "conventional home"...

Then again, this is the sparkling intellect that included a step to,

"Clean the wires with the wire cutters. To clean the wires, take the wire cutters and squeeze the wires gently and pull back gently."

We've never heard of "cleaning" a wire, but that looks suspiciously like stripping off the insulation to us. And then there's this...

"Attach the blue and black wires coming from the breaker box."

We know of no supply wire (for residential wiring) that includes a blue wire... but this is the same sort of intelligence that told her readers to,

"Run the clean wires through the bracket and attach them with the screws that came with the bracket... Attach the fan base to the bracket... Put the fan blades on... Tighten down with pliers and a Phillips screwdriver."

Word. The moron never said a word about mounting the bracket to the ceiling box, not to mention that the wires don't attach to the bracket and that there's no way to tighten fan blades with pliers. Not only is this one dirt-stupid, it's also dangerously incomplete. Hence Marissa's sixth Dumbass of the Day award!

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