Fog Lights for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXX

headlight beam pattern comparison

Many of the self-described "professional writers" who pounded out content for eHow.com operated by the principle that as long as they could get their verbiage past the company's gatekeepers – the content editors – it must be good enough for publication. Once they realized that the content editors knew just as little about the topics as they did, the writers found themselves free to write even the most ridiculous statements, as long as they were (more or less) grammatically correct and met the website's style guidelines. That's how the kind of bogosity sprinkled throughout "Purpose of Fog Lights,"¹ a Heather Broeker post now living at ItStillRuns.com, managed to contribute to the stupidification of the internet.

Broeker managed to get the core purpose of fog lights onto the page:

"They... help you see through the fog."

We mean, really: who doesn't know that? It's the rest of the 350-plus words that contained the stench of ignorance. Here's a partial list of some of the more egregious dumbassery Broeker submitted:

• "...fog lights [are] man-made illumination located on your car's light switch." – No Heather, they're located on the front end of the car.
• "They are low beams that help you see through the fog." – No, Heather, they are low-mounted lights designed to illuminate the road surface below a layer of fog.
• "If you were to use your regular or high-beam lights..." – That reads like Heather thinks that low beams are "regular" lights... or maybe that high beams are "regular" – it's ambiguous.
• "Fog lights... only light the ground immediately in front of your car..." – Depends on your definition of "immediately," we guess, but most project out at least 100 feet.
• "...the light they expel is actually cut off at the top, creating a light pattern that projects straight out, then flat and then down, but not higher." – First, WTF is this "expel" bullshit? Was that Heather's attempted synonym for "project"? And second, how the heck do you change the direction of a beam of light without a reflecting or refracting surface? Hint: you can't...

Broeker also seems to have missed the information that the beam of fog lights covers a shorter and wider area than conventional headlight low- or high-beams. Guess she should have looked harder.

Given the combination of clueless verbiage and half-assed research, is it any wonder that we decided to award Broeker another Dumbass of the Day award?

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/about_5038551_purpose-fog-lights.html

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