SLR Cameras for Dummies

SLR viewfinder system

In the bad old days of content farms, a number of "freelancers" subscribed to lists of the most popular searches, lists that they used to guide their publishing at free-for-all sites like Squidoo or HubPages (some sites, like Helium and eHow, scraped search queries and offered "titles" to their contributors). Catalogs.com, the former WhoWhatWhenWhereWhy.com, seems to have been a free-for-all, which allowed people like George Garza to pound out rubbish like, "What is an SLR camera" (George's byline has been stripped off recently, but it's his, all right.).

Coin Collecting for Dummies

coin collection

According to news reports, one interesting effect of the self-imposed semi-quarantine in which so many find themselves these days is a rediscovery of stamp and coin collecting as people find themselves tired of staring at screens all the time. Not that collecting either one via the internet doesn't mean hours of staring at screens... but we digress. Both new coin collectors and those who've resurrected a childhood collection of pennies soon learn that other people know a heckuva lot more about the hobby than a newbie. That does not, however, include the likes of Bryce Hammons, who attempted to explain to people "How much is a coin worth" for Catalogs.com (Bryce's byline disappeared not long ago, but the content remains unchanged).

Track Lighting Installation for Dummies

track lighting

By our uncertain measure, it's been several months (four, to be precise) since the last time we took aim at one of the miscreants who wrote for WhoWhatWhereWhyHow.com, or whatever the original name of Catalogs.com was. Since that day, we see, C.c has... disintegrated, sort of. The company appears to have sold off all its "info," as they call it, to some blogger running Wordpress (ptui!). That kind soul has changed the author name on (almost) every post to "user," except for the ones credited to "admin." They can try, but we figured it out anyway: M. Dee Dubroff is the one responsible for "How to Install Track Lighting."

New Shower Heads the Dummy Way

using a wrench on a shower head

It's been a while since we stopped by the former WhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow... or whatever the name was before it became Catalogs.com and started shilling for... well, for catalogs. Not that they exist any more. Where were we? Oh, yeah, it's been a while. That's why we pulled the list of candidates from the site out of storage and plucked an article by Julie Henry at random. Julie was trying to tell people about "Changing a Shower Head," and got a tad off track.

GPS for Complete Dummies

basics of GPS

Content farms of the internet break down into two different families: in the sites such as HubPages.com, freelancers post about anything. At the other type of sites, such as the eHow.com niches, freelancers choose from a list of topics. We harvest most of our DotD nominees from the second group, which might lead one to think that freelancers at HubPages (or InfoBarrel, WritEdge, etc.) only write on topics about which they're knowledgeable. One would be wrong, as is ably demonstrated by M. Dee Dubroff (Marjorie Dorfman) from Catalogs.com in her post, "What Is GPS?"

Gazebos on Decks for the DIY Dummy

deck with gazebo

Most of the staffers here at the Antisocial Network can claim at least intermediate skills in some form of DIY. That may be why, when one of them runs across what's supposed to be a "how-to" article that isn't, they get a little  peeved. It's one thing when a freelancer botches the instructions out of laziness and/or ignorance, it's quite another when the freelancer just punts. Today's punter is one Bryce Hammons (so-called "info guru" at Catalogs.com), whom we caught drop-kicking "How to build decks with gazebos" (the site now attributes his crap to "Catalogs Editorial Staff," but it's all Bryce's).

Volcanism for the Geological Dummy

eruption of melted rock (lava) from a volcano

From time to time we let the Antisocial Network's staff geologist out to see what dumbassery he can find about some of the most well-known events in the earth sciences. Many of the freelancers he catches are babbling incoherently about earthquakes, some blather about oil or mining, and quite a few think they can "educate" their readers about volcanoes. Landing squarely in group three, then, we find Catalogs.com "guru" George Garza and his monumentally doofus article, "What Makes a Volcano Erupt?" (now credited to "catalogs editorial staff").

White as Snow for the Optics Dummy

diffuse reflection ice crystals in snow

A surprising number of people seem to think that they don't comprehend technical stuff because they just "aren't wired that way." We think that's bullbleep: they's just as capable of understanding chemistry as they are renaissance art, they just like art more and so they've directed themselves at it. Or, in the case of the American female, been pointed toward it. Enough of that: we're here to talk about freelance dumbassery. The reason we got sidetracked, though, is that today's DotD candidate, M. Dee Dubroff (aka Marjorie Dorfman), clearly pointed herself toward things artistic; which means when she tried to explain optics in "Why Is Snow White" at Catalogs.com (now credited to "Catalogs Editorial Staff), she ended up in trouble.

Volcanology for Student Dummies

Volcano cross-section

We here at the Antisocial Network trot our staff geologist out from time to time – the guy's retired from the oil biz, so he spends most of his time arguing with people about fracking on Facebook – to look over the self-appointed earth-science experts among our freelancers. He'd already outed Catalogs.com's Cindi Pearce last year, but her treatise on orogenesis apparently wasn't enough misinformation: Cindi also attempted to explain "How are Volcanoes Formed?" for the same site (now credited to "Catalogs editorial staff"), with equally sad results.

Bathroom Sconces 101, the Dummy Version

Bathroom sconce lighting

Our Antisocial Network staffers absolutely hate it when they come across some random freelancer pulling that old bait and switch in their writing. You know what we mean; like titling a piece "How to Win the Lottery" and then filling it with self-serving links ("associate" links) to lottery tickets: crap like that. Today's DotD candidate is Sara Shea of Catalogs.com, who pulled a bait-and-switch by titling her piece "Installing bathroom sconce lighting." After that title, though, she said nothing about installing. Period.

Well, we take that back: she did refer to an eHow title "How to Install a Wall Light," but for some reason her link to that content redirects to an SFGate post on how to hang a chandelier in a two-story foyer, which we submit is not the same thing... but we digress. Shea has a lot of boilerplate crap about the history of sconces, including such useful information for would-be bathroom decorators as

Installing a Sink, the Dummy Method

Lavatory basin installation

It's been a while since our research staffers peeked from the muck that is eHow.com, but today they decided to remind our readers that freelancers whose only qualification was greed managed to infest other corners of the net as well. Today's nominee for DotD is a returning visitor from Catalogs.com (formerly known as WhoWhatWhenWhereHowWhy, etc.) who wrote there under the pseudonym M. Dee Dubroff (known elsewhere as Marjorie Dorfman). Today, Dubroff is going to tell us "How to Install a Sink." Or maybe not...

Automatic Transmissions for Dummies

Automatic transmission selector lever 

One of the Antisocial Network staffers took the family SUV into the dealer for maintenance one day, and was a little surprised to see his vehicle still waiting to be driven into the shop ten minutes later. When he asked the service writer why, he was told that they were waiting for the tech who knew how to drive a manual transmission to get free. No kidding. There used to be lots of how-to articles for maual trannies out there, but our researcher was pretty surprised when she ran across this slightly different one: "info guru" Bryce Hammons of Catalogs.com (formerly WhoWhatWhyWhere or something like that) decided it was necessary, or more likely profitable, to explain "How to drive an automatic car." And no, he didn't mean a driverless car.

Making Magnets for Dummies

the Magnetic field

Researchers at the Antisocial Network run across dozens of questionable freelancer posts every time they fire up their search engines (Google more than Bing, if you're interested). Lots and lots are about do-it-yourself projects or about figuring out what's wrong with your car, but there's also a healthy dose of misinformation about the natural world out there; especially science. J-school, history, poly-sci and English majors are particularly likely to mangle even the most basic science in the search for residual income. Need an example? well take the catalogs.com (formerly known as WhoWhatWhereWhenWhy), where one of our staffers caught contributor M. Dee Dubroff (aka Marjorie Dorfman) attempting to answer the eternal question, "How Are Magnets Made?"

Disc Brake Pads for Dummy Drivers

Disc brake rotor and caliper

When it comes to DIY jobs on the family car (or truck, SUV or minivan), the brake system presents the most interesting intersection between ease of service and potential disaster if screwed up. A reasonably handy person with a reasonably well-equipped toolbox can perform some of the simpler tasks under the backyard shadetree, but this is definitely one system where you don't want to screw up. That's why we were displeased to find Catalog.com's Aurora LaJambre exercising her creative writing skills (as opposed to her first-hand knowledge) to tell her readers about "Changing brake pads and basic brake maintenance" (now credited to "Catalogs  Editorial Staff"). Sigh: another "creative writer" who doesn't recognize non-parallel construction...

Thermostat Installation for DIY Dummies

Thermostat wiring

Unless the situation is pretty dire, we suspect most of you wouldn't go next door and ask a neighbor to stop mowing his lawn and take out your kid's appendix; ditto with writing you a new will. Doctors and lawyers go through extensive training for a reason – and, for that matter, so do professional plumbers and electricians. If and when we do attempt home repairs, we certainly want advice and instructions from an experienced person (preferably professional) instead of someone who... well, someone who's obviously never done the job. You know, someone like Sally Odum, who we caught pretending to know "How to install a new thermostat" at the site called Catalogs.com (formerly WhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHowWhatever or something like that).

We get the definite impression Sally's never installed a new thermostat herself (at best, perhaps she was around while her "hubby"¹ installed one) based on some of her dumber misinformation. She begins by informing her readers that,

Solving Equations for Dummy Math Students

Solve this equation, Oliver...

The people at the Antisocial Network are pretty much like anyone in the age of the internet: when we want to know something, we whip out our smartphones (android, never iOs) and fire up Google to look for an answer. We all know that's why content farms, especially those claiming to specialize in "how-to" took off a decade or so ago, but we learned a hard lesson from those places: don't trust them! When we look for an answer or help on a new problem, we want someone with experience and know-how to explain things, and we want an answer: not someone dancing around the topic and never actually saying anything. That's why we returned to Oliver VanDervoort and Catalogs.com: the guy just plain bullshitted his way through something he called "How to Solve Math Equations," back when the site was WhoWhatWhereWhenWhy.com. You can see why they left out the "how" after reading this crap.

Installing a Pet Door, the Dummy Version

Dog Door

Have you ever walked eagerly into a store or show room, your heart set on some marvelous bargain the store had advertised, only to find that the merchandise was no longer available? Sure you have; probably every time you've shopped for furniture or a used car, sometimes even for groceries. When done deliberately (it often is), this upselling technique is a form of "bait and switch." Whether it's deliberate or simple dumbassery, content farmers and other freelancers often use a similar technique called click bait: a title or eye-catching link that leads the reader to pedestrian bullshit, but doesn't yield what it promises. You know, like the Catalogs.com how-to article titled "Installing a Pet Door at Home," posted courtesy of  Info Guru Bryce Hammons (guru, our collective hiney!)

Mountain-Building for Geology Dummies

Explain these, Cindi...

Science... why do some people even try? Even the simplest scientific concepts seem to baffle many of the self-appointed freelancers on the internet. Our researchers have lost count of the number of times they've seen scientific terms misapplied, mathematical formulas written incorrectly, and the most basic principles presented in wildly incorrect terms. Having studiously avoided all those hard science and math classes to get a BA degree (journalism, political science, business and English seem to be the most-favored disciplines), these folks still think their innate "intelligence" and "research skills" allow them to hold forth, at length, on any topic. Some, like Catalog.com's Cindi Pearce, prove themselves wrong as soon as they sit down at their keyboards. Have a look at Cindi's opus, "How Mountains Are Made" (now credited to "Catalogs Editorial Staff") if you don't believe us...

Motorcycle Engine Displacement for Dummies

Motorcycle engine

Our founder (and most antisocial member of the network) well remembers a former classmate, who was one of the most irritating personality types there can be: someone who knows everything. In fact, the only thing worse than a know-it-all is someone who does know it all (can you say, "Sheldon Cooper"?). A surprising number of self-appointed know-it-alls end up being freelancers, where they can put all that excess brainage to work. Unfortunately for internet readers, most of them don't know everything. Over at Catalogs.com, we found some dude named Oliver Vandervoort, whose profile at the former WhoWhatWhereWhenWhy.com claims that, "If there is a topic he is not an expert on just yet, he soon will be." The questionable sentence structure notwithstanding, Oliver's claim of universal expertise is downright preposterous, as he demonstrated with the article he called "Meaning of cc in motorcycles" (now credited to "Catalogs Editorial Staff")

Storing a Bicycle for Dummies

This is a "stationary mount"?

We swear, some freelancing fools will write about anything, whether or not they have the slightest idea what they're talking about. We're not even gonna talk about the grammatical mistakes and hyperbolic language some of them use in their never-ending efforts to sound important. No, we're talking about garden-variety stupidity and ignorance of even the most basic factoids. The putz who engendered this particular rant is today's DotD candidate, the third freelancer of the week from the former WhoWhatWhereWhenWhy.com (now cleverly renamed Catalogs.com), Tim Brugger. Tim's topic is "How to Store a Bicycle" (now credited to "Catalogs editorial staff.") As simple as that subject may seem, he proved equal to the challenge of making as many stupid mistakes as possible...