A Homemade Wakeboard for Dummies

plywood wakeboard assembly

Some of the most cockamamie sets of instructions we've come across in the eHow.com pantheon have been for people trying to explain how to make your own sports equipment (we'll include a brief list below). The reality of sports equipment is that it's rarely easy to make, and the eHowian contributors who pretended to know how rarely had the slightest idea how to do it. To the list of fake DIYers, then, add Brandy Alexander (or so she claims) and her SportsRec.com post, "How to Make a Homemade Wakeboard."

Batting Average for Dummies

Baseball at bat

While our staffers are out wandering around the internet looking for DotD nominees, it's pretty normal for them to find content that seems to be authoritative but actually is only correct(ish) in the surface. A surprising (not) amount of the content fitting that content seems to be written by people with journalism degrees; probably because so many didn't have a job in the field after the recession of 2008-9... That may well be why eHow.com's Joe Steel published his light-weight instructions for "How to Calculate a Batting Average" for SportsRec.com.

Baseball Pins for Dummy Collectors

1980 Winter Olympics pin

Our research team members come up with really weirdest crap at times, but perhaps the best of the best (or is it worst of the worst?) are the content-farm posts freelancing non-English speakers have cobbled together in a desperate attempt to pick up a few US dollars. We've already featured one of them, an EzineArticles.com contributor using the pseudonym Mary Riverstone (perhaps really someone named Greeshma Justin) – and she's back for her third appearance with "Baseball Trading Pins - The Color of Enthusiasm and Spirit!"

Baseball Dugouts for DIY Dummies

typical baseball dugout

Our research staffers turn up some of the most innocuous-seeming topics while looking for new DotD candidates. It makes no difference whether the topic is home repair, mathematics, sports, science, or any of myriad other topics; they're always on the lookout for stupidification of the internet in any of its forms. Today, one staffer's search led her to baseball and "How to Build a Baseball Dugout," an eHow post written by Tzvi Raphael and subsequently relocated to SportsRec.com.

Dented Bat Repair for Dummies

dented softball bat

Several of our staffers are current or former softball players. A few are even old enough to remember a time when the only bats were wood; but even they have been known to use an aluminum bat from time to time. The question of dented bats comes up from time to time. Using one in a sanctioned game is a rule violation, mostly because it could be dangerous. What do you do if your favorite bat is dented? Well, if you believe freelancer Giselle Diamond and her SportsRec.com article "How to Get a Dent out of a Softball Bat," you just take the bat to your favorite auto body shop...

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...

RBIs for Dummy Baseball Fans

Counting RBIs

Our research staffers cover a lot of ground in their searches, no doubt about that. One thing our readers can take to the bank, however, is that they don't search for DotD candidates in places where they wouldn't normally spend much time themselves. That's why you don't often find nominations for content about beauty, first-person shooter games, or Macintoshes: they don't have the expertise necessary to debunk a freelancer's bogus statements. At least one of them does know baseball pretty well – the rules, not the personalities – which sets them apart from Kathryn Hatter as demonstrated in her SportsRec.com post "How to Calculate RBI."

Homemade Curling Stones for Dummies

Curling stones

Our research staffers find many an internet freelancer whose body of work suggest that their grades of C in their science and math classes (assuming they took any at all) were grade inflation and/or generosity. Regardless of these and similar educational deficiencies, many a self-appointed "freelance journalist" maintains that he or she can write knowledgeably about any topic. We like to prove them wrong. Take eHowian Rachel Murdock, who may have seen curling once in the Winter Olympics: she had the gall to think she could reword someone else's instructions about "How to Make Curling Rocks for Fun"¹ (at SportsRec.com). She couldn't...

Pitching Rubbers for Dummies

Distance to pitcher's rubber, major
league baseball diamond

Some of the internet freelancers our research staffers uncover during their searches have fallen back on a time-honored technique of obfuscation: if you don't know jack about your subject, bury that lack under an avalanche of factoids and miscellaneous rubbish you lift from authoritative sources. One practitioner of this technique the kids have uncovered is eHow.com contributor W. D. Adkins, a self-described "professional journalist" and the possessor of multiple liberal arts MA degrees (we'll need to look at his science articles more closely). Some of his articles are veritable blizzards of verbosity, but the sad fact is that ignorance will out, just as it did when he posted "How to Measure Distances for the Pitching Rubber" at SportsRec.com.

Inflating a Basketball for Dummy Collectors

Basketball inflation

From time to time, we like to make fun of our dumbasses (if you didn't know, the Antisocial Network staffers hand out a daily "Dumbass of the Day" award) for some of their more truly ridiculous statements. It's not bad enough that these people hold themselves out as authorities on topics they'd never heard of before starting to "research" them; but some of them are nowhere near as skilled as their biographies might suggest. Take, for instance, eHow's Sheri Lamb: according to her profile, Sheri "...has covered virtually every beat associated with community newspapers...[specializing] in sports." She also claims "...skills as a reporter..."; but the quality of her output in "How to Keep a Basketball From Losing Air" (now at SportsRec.com) definitely belies both claims.

Making a Hockey Stick, the Dummy Method

Try cutting this out of wood, Michelle!

A couple of our Antisocial Network staff members found themselves watching the Stanley Cup playoffs a few nights ago (Go, Pens!) and one of them remarked in our staff meeting the next morning that most Americans (yes we know, Canadians live in North America, too) seem to know absolutely jack about ice hockey. Ask most of our fellow countrymen the difference between offsides and icing or where the point is, and you'll probably just receive a blank look. Oddly, having this level of ignorance doesn't stop some people from pretending to be knowledgeable about the sport... For a specific example, we now refer you to Michelle Raphael, whose BA in PolySci just plain failed her when she decided to contribute "How to Build a Hockey Stick" to the idiot factory called eHow.com. Leaf's now moved it to SportsRec.com.