Making Epsom Salts the Dummies Way

Anybody remember "transactional analysis"? The self-help system went into all this "what you said, what I heard, what you thought you said, what I think I heard..." stuff in an effort to improve communications. We call that "listening" these days, but whatever. Anyway, today we have some anonymous person asking Healthfully.com "How to Make Epsom Salt,"¹ and a freelancer thinking someone wanted to make a powder of MgSO₄(H₂O)_x where, in reality, it's a safe bet that the OQ wanted to know how to make an Epsom salt bath. But Enzo Silvestri wasn't having any of that...

Making a Katana, the Dummies Version

Those don't look like 2½" cherry dowels, Danny...

We really have to hand it to some of the self-appointed freelancers out there; especially the people who attempt to write how-tos about something they've never done themselves. Heck, the most... interesting? annoying? irritating? of them all are the ones who have no earthly idea what they're talking about, but forge bravely ahead anyway. We're walking about people like eHow's Danny Donahue, who claimed to have "worked with some of the finest construction talent" somewhere, but failed to ask them for advice about "How to Make a Katana Handle¹" for Healthfully.com.

Making Lacrosse Sticks for Dummies

Where's that 45° angle, Owen?

Some of our staffers have driven a Buick Lacrosse, and one or two have even been to LaCrosse, Wisconsin – but the ugly truth is that no one in the building has ever played lacrosse. Several have seen lacrosse played and even found the occasional lacrosse ball rolling around in the street by a park, but played it? Nope. Based on the article "How to Make a Wooden Lacrosse Shaft"¹ he wrote for Healthfully.com, we're pretty certain that Owen E. Richason IV has never tossed a ball around, either...

Changing a Tire for the Dummy Cyclist

Spoons seem a little... flimsy for this maneuver

We like the old adage that "Sometimes, even a blind pig finds an acorn"; like it so much that we had a sign made up and posted in the break room. It's right next to the Ben Franklin quotation, "We are all born ignorant but one must work hard to remain stupid." When it comes to websites, eHow.com must have been one of those hard workers, which is why it (and other niche sites Leaf Group has moved eHow.com content to) remains a rich vein of dumbassery. Take, for instance, Janos Gal, who visited "How to Remove a Schwinn Bicycle Tire"¹ upon the site, which promptly moved it to Healthfully.com.

Computer Resets for the Dummy Cyclist

Bicycle tire size chart – no "codes"

One of our staffers once unearthed a t-shirt that had belonged to his father. The sentiment expressed on the shirt was something along the lines of "Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do." We like that... we like it because the freelancers who think they can copy, reword, and paste anything – and make sense – are, frankly, annoying as hell. Take, for instance, eHow.coms Rocco Pendola, who specialized in bicycles (perhaps because he has an "urban studies" degree?), in the process pumping out utter bull. Take, for instance, "How to Reset a Bicycle Speedometer & Tire Size,"¹ which Leaf Group has helpfully moved to Healthfully.com.

Elliptical Machines and Distance for Fitness Dummies

Elliptical machine

A couple of days ago we featured the lousy customer support at ICON Fitness and their NordicTrack division, which got us thinking about some of the stupid things freelancers are likely to say about those machines. Sure enough, we checked our files and found that seven-time DotD winner Greyson Ferguson had attempted to answer a question about ellipticals for eHow: "How to Calculate Distance on an Elliptical Trainer"¹ at Healthfully.com.

pH Strips for Dummies

pH test strips

Just when our staffers here at the Antisocial Network think they've found the dumbest rubbish ever posted to the internet in hopes of picking up a few extra pennies, along comes a new candidate. As you might expect, our research team has once again gone to that apparently inexhaustible well of dumbassery, the intersection of STEM and eHow.com. For today's demonstration of scientific illiteracy we're calling on an English major (and wedding planner) named Tiesha Whatley, who astounded one of our team with what she had to say about "How to Use pH Strips"¹ at Healthfully.com.

Yep: a wedding planner holding forth on chemistry: what could go wrong here? Well, plenty, starting with Tiesha's very first statement:

Got a Flat on Your Bicycle, Dummy?

Yup: that's a flat tire

It's been a while since we looked into some of the stupidity about bicycles that has made it onto the internet. To be sure, there is good information in forums and at places like the website of the late, lamented Sheldon Brown. The cycling enthusiasts here at the Antisocial Network only look at supposed how-to cycling articles on eHow and HubPages to see just how dumb some of those asses are; and boy, did we find a winner for today! As you probably expected, our winning entry comes from eHow.com, where it's been online since 2007. The freelancer who sprayed this bull all over the internet called himself Zundy, and good ol' Zund was allegedly trying to explain "How to Change a Flat Bike Tire"¹ at Healthfully.com. We say "allegedly" because, well, the article reads  more like a prank than a how-to.

Bicycle Pumps for Dummy Cyclists

Presta valve

Beginning fiction writers are often told to "write what you know," which may be why so many self-published novels are downright boring (not to mention badly written). Of course, making money off of topics about which you know practically nothing is a time-honored practice at content farms and on blogs, a practice that keeps us in business (so to speak) here at the Antisocial Network, if you can call it that: making fun of dumbasses is more a labor of love, actually. So with that in mind, we say "Thanks" to eHow's Rocco Pendola, who we caught holding forth on a topic about which we had no difficulty telling that he knows nothing: "My Bicycle Pump Won't Work"¹ in a Healthfully.com post.

We say he obviously knows nothing because first, he found it necessary to quote the late Sheldon Brown when describing the difference between Schrader and Presta valves (he had to look it up? you're kidding, right?) and second, because of a rather embarrassing  faux pas Rocco (and an incompetent content editor at eHow) left embedded in his (mis)information:

Bicycle Tire Size for Dummies

A bicycle wheel

We at the Antisocial Network just love the dumbasses at eHow.com; a site where clueless freelancers answer stupid questions. We mean, who's so out of touch with reality that he or she needs to ask "How to Determine Bicycle Tire Size"?¹ Well, whoever it was, eHow's Shelly Schumacher was apparently just as dumb, if not dumber. We kid you not.

Shelly, as eHow'.coms journalism majors so often do, began her Healthfully.com article with a scintillating introduction:

"As one of the most popular forms of exercise and sports on the plant [sic]..."

Presumably, Schumacher meant "planet," but we will never know for certain. So, anyway, to move on to the meat of the matter... Shelly presented five different ways to obtain this critical information, only one (or perhaps two) of which would be particularly useful. Any sensible cyclist (what Shelly calls a "bike rider") would use her solution number three:

Derailers for Dummies (Bike Week)

Barrel adjuster on rear derailleur

May is National Bike Month, which we at your friendly neighborhood Antisocial Network have been celebrating this week by pointing out clueless freelancers pretending to give advice about bicycles. Perhaps the richest vein of dumbassery on any topic can be found at eHow.com, especially the early content submitted anonymously. In those days, the How (Not) To articles bore only the byline "eHow Sports and Fitness Editor," such as today's article, "How to Fix a Poorly Shifting Bicycle"¹ (now attributed to "Contributor" by Healthfully.com)

According to that long-anonymous writer, "There are only two factors that affect [a] derailleur's function: cable tension and derailleur alignment." We won't argue with that statement because it's a simplistic version of true (omitting for now, the possibility of worn cogs and chainrings). What we will argue about is Anon's instructions on how to adjust cable tension: