Drip Irrigation for Dummies

drip irrigation drippers

The staffers at world HQ of the Antisocial Network have recently been working in the "community garden" in preparation for spring planting. The biggest task is refurbishing the drip irrigation system for the raised garden beds, so it was with some interest that the gardeners among us read through the EzineArticles.com post by returning DotD Shalini Madhav (sometimes known as "dbslinks"). We were more than a little interested to see what the Bangladeshi freelancer had to say on the topic of, "Steps To Install A Drip Irrigation System." We weren't disappointed – if by "disappointed" you mean, "Didn't find anything that contributed to the stupidification of the internet."

Mower Blades for the Dummy Homeowner

Dull lawnmower blade

The freelancers who hacked their way through the early days of eHow learned quickly that the easiest way to amass vast piles of cash was to "claim" a bunch of "titles" that were all roughly the same question, and then rewrite the same answer for every one of them. At ten or fifteen bucks a pop, a dozen or so posts pounded out in a couple of hours could really add up, Of course, since it was eHow.com, most of them didn't care whether they gave the right answer, just that they got paid. And paid Elizabeth Knoll was, for "How to Loosen a Lawnmower Blade,"¹ now niched at GardenGuides.com.

Tubeless Mower Tires for Dummies

Inflating a tubeless tire

We like to think we do our homework here at the Antisocial Network, which includes following reference links and doing some biographical research on our DotD candidates. We don't have access to NSA databases, but we like to think we have some skill at ferreting out the bull. We picked today's nominee, GardenGuides.com writer Ma Wen Jie, on the basis of a lousy job of explaining "How to Change a Tubeless Mower Tire." Little did we know at the time that "Mr. Ma," who looked suspiciously western in his byline photo, originally published it under the name Christopher Earle.

Copy, Reword, Paste for Dummies

tree height estimation

As far as we can tell, the self-appointed freelance "professionals" who wrote for eHow (some of whom still write for Leaf Group) were a motley crew composed mainly of English majors and unemployed journalism graduates. As one of them once admitted (see comment here), they had to meet "crippling" deadline pressure to collect their pittance of a stipend. Still, you'd think the more "professional" ones would have a good handle on the simple copy-reword-paste process... Owen E. Richason IV, however, showed that some didn't with his eHow.com post, "How to Measure How Far a Tree Will Fall."

Tire Plugs for Dummies

tire repair with plug

It's sad, we know, but we see a distressing number of "how-to" posts on the internet that go into great detail about the easy part of a project, while glossing over the stuff that's hard. We can't say for certain, but we suspect it's because the people writing posts didn't understand the instructions they're rewording, so they just skipped over the confusing bits. Today's DotD nominees is a prime example: she's Kaye Lynne Booth, found over at GardenGuides.com trying to explain "How to Fix a Tubeless Wheelbarrow Tire."¹

Flagstone, the Clueless Version

These flagstones are slate, not sandstone

For some reason that no one here at the Antisocial network understands, a surprising number of self-appointed freelancers seem to be confused by the difference between the specific and the general. It happens a lot when people start writing about topics they aren't familiar with, especially if the topic is even the least bit "technical." Take today's DotD nominee, for example: Sharon Bellissimo of EzineArticles.com decided to share her own "Facts about Flagstone" with her readers. Too bad she didn't know anything before she started...

Moving Sprinkler Heads for Dummies

Nope, no swing pipe here, Dave...

If you wanted to troubleshoot a 1967 Camaro, you might head to Google to look for help. If you ran across a website that went on and on about the EFI and the exhaust gas recirculation valve, you'd recognize it immediately as utter bull. Why? because no '67 Camaro had fuel injection, electronic or otherwise; and no vehicle in the '60s needed emissions control, including the EGR valve. The same thing happened many times across the website called eHow, where J-school and English lit graduates scraped information from the web without understanding it and pretended to help people in need. Take, for instance, "technology sector" guy David Miller, found here explaining "How to Move Inground Sprinkler Heads" for eHow.com... or perhaps not.

Lawnmower Blades for Dummies

Uhhh, what lever, Greyson?

For some reason, most children of the so-called "digital age" never had the pleasure of pushing a lawn mower around Mommy and Daddy's yard. There are undocumented immigrants for that kind of work, to the tune of $35 per week... That being said, someone somewhere once asked "How to Adjust Lawnmower Blades"¹ and Greyson Ferguson, a digital kid who had probably never even used a mower, happily answered the question for eHow... or he at least tried to.

Growing Asparagus for Dummy Gardeners

Asparagus crowns

Each spring, our staff here at the Antisocial Network eagerly await the arrival of cheap asparagus. In the local groceries, the prices start dropping from almost five bucks a pound some time in March or April, occasionally even dipping below a buck (can you say "loss leaders," people?). Of course, it's still been harvested somewhere in Mexico and shipped hundreds or thousands of miles, but hey – it's in season! Since relocating AN HQ from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest, we actually tried planting our own; sticking some of those dried-out-looking "crowns" in a prepared bed and sitting back to wait... And wait... And wait... So, "How Long Does it Take Asparagus Crowns to Sprout,"¹ anyway? Yep, when our crowns didn't show any shoots for a while, we googled it: and we found a familiar name: Demand Media's Shala Munroe "explaining" this in her "answer" for SFGate. Well, that's what she claimed, anyway...

Greenhouses for Dummies

Garden greenhouse

Whether you're a house plant fan, a gardening guru, or someone who grows his own pot; chances are that at one time or another you've looked into buying a small greenhouse to build in your backyard. Once you recovered from the sticker shock, you probably googled the possibility of building one on your own. We know that for a fact – one of our researchers did just that. Luckily for him, he skipped over the freelance bull out there and looked for books and plans written by professionals. That's why he never accidentally encountered the article at WriteEdge.com written by someone calling herself Raradra (she's really Michelle Harlow, part owner of the site); an article cleverly titled "How to Build Your Own Greenhouse."¹ Sadly, the title was the only clever bit of this post...

Changing Mower Tires for Dummies

Removing tire from wheel with tire irons

The word for the day is "avoidance." The Antisocial Network's staff Labrador retriever is expert at this maneuver: put a treat in front of her, tell her to "leave it," and she'll look everywhere but at her treat. Tell her to take it and it's gone in an instant. With apologies to bumper-sticker writers everywhere, it's pretty clear that "Our Labrador retriever is smarter than your freelancer"! That's especially likely if the our freelancer happens to be eHow.com contributor Owen E. Richason IV, back for the second time this week alone. We caught Owen demonstrating avoidance in a post he called  (or perhaps more accurately, eHow called) "How to Change a Simplicity Mower Tire," now at GardenGuides.com.

Carburetors for the Dummy Landscaper

Though almost all gasoline-powered cars and trucks on the road these days have fuel injection, a lot of people still have a carburetor or two lurking in their garages: carburetors can be found on lawnmowers, trimmers, chainsaws and leaf blowers, for example. The carbs on either two- or four-cycle small engines are notoriously finicky, especially if the tool's not used on a regular basis. If your small engine's not running well, you'll probably head to the internet for some help (especially if your owner's manual was written and printed in China). With luck, you'll get help; if your luck's bad, you'll find Larry Parr, (a returning "expert") holding forth for Hunker.com in "How to Adjust Carb [sic] On Craftsman Leaf Blower" at GardenGuides.com. We say "bad luck," because the advice you get from Larry is pretty useless. Larry's sole instruction for adjusting the carburetor on a Craftsman Leaf Blower – or for any other small engine carburetor - is:

Fifth-Grade Math for Dummy Landscapers

10-15 yards of dirt...

Remember fifth-grade math? or are you old enough to have called it "arithmetic"? Whichever, your teacher – Jack Larimer in the case of the Antisocial Network's house mathematician – drilled you hard on checking your work, as did every other teacher you had. Well, unless maybe you're Lillian Teague from eHow.com. Lillian forgot that lesson when she "researched" and wrote "How to Calculate Dirt Yards" (now folded into a "topic"¹ at GardenGuides.com – without her byline. Poor Lillian.)

Yard Work for Dummies

She's ba-a-ack! We mean the queen of eHow, Lacy Enderson. Today's she's parlayed that Master's Degree in Biblical Counseling into counseling her readers (if there are any readers) on "How to Use a Pole Pruner."¹ It's a classic case of eHow blindness (note: it's now showing up at GardenGuides.com)...

Let's consider a f'rinstance: you ask us a general question, like how to install a doorknob. We launch into a detailed discussion of how to install a Shlage BE365 Bluetooth-enabled Deadbolt (yes, there are "smart" deadbolts now), essentially reworded from the owner's manual. Is that useful to you? Probably not - unless you intended to install a Schlage BE365 Bluletooth-enabled Deadbolt. You just wanted general instructions about doors, doorjambs, tools, and such - not instructions about how to pair a specific deadbolt with your smartphone. Those instructions we gave you, as a result, turn out to be pretty useless.

To Quote the Dummy, "Do as I Say, Not as I Do"

Quick and dirty blade balancing

A new day, a new platform rife with freelancer stupidity! A little poking around at the website SnapGuide.com quickly located a contributor more interested in making money off his expertise than getting off his lazy butt. The freelancer is Jim Burke, and his topic is "How to Sharpen Mower Blades." 

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with the instructions Burke gave, other than the fact that his mower is considerably different from that of most people, so the ten steps spent on getting the blade(s) off are pretty much a waste. It's also not that he assumed people have a grinding wheel (we actually do, but that's beside the point). No the dumbassery came in at steps 20 and 21, in which Burke told us,

When Dummies Have Gardening Advice

An "apple garden," according to mr

Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! We just ran across another pay-per-view website to mine for dumbasses. It's called Elite Visitors, and seems to be where all the Bubblers have gone now that Bubblews.com has throttled their payments [Editor's note: EliteVisitors is just as gone as Bubblews now: No loss...]. And just like Bubblews, it's an absolute treasure trove of Dumbasses. The only problem is finding anything that has enough information in it to be wrong – most of what's posted there is, like Bubblews, just random garbage. We did find this little morsel, however, kindly provided by an elitist who simply calls himself (herself?) "mr" - a piece of dreck writing entitled "Choosing a Garden That is Perfect for You."¹

mr tells us there are three types of gardens: flower, vegetable, and fruit. Huh? There's such a thing as a "fruit garden"? Lemme see: 14 million google hits on "flower garden," 10 million on "vegetable garden," and only about half a million on "fruit garden." There must be a gazillion on "orchard," though...

So here's what mr says about these fruit gardens: