Sending Cash for Dummies

FedEx envelope full of cash

Our staffers are amazed some times at the apparent lack of critical thinking displayed by our DotD nominees. Take, for instance, the bozo who went into great detail about SNAP and AFDC when asked to define a "welfare check" instead of thinking about having the beat cop check on Grandpa 'cause he isn't answering the landline. Well, they found another self-appointed freelancer who can't seem to think. This time, it's Patrick Hutchison trying to tell people "How to Send Money to a Hotel" for azCentral.com.

See the USA, the Dummies Version

That's 3,933 miles, "Trudy"

If there's one feature of the lesser content farms that drives our research staffers bonkers, it just about has to be fake travel reviews. Some are reasonably literate considering that the writer has never been there (or hasn't been there in decades), but the worst are the ones in which some content-spinner mangled an article from an in-flight magazine or similar lightweight prose. Here's one of the latter, the only SooperArticles.com post pounded out by Trudy Seeger: "Planning For A Memorable USA Trip? Get These Cities In Your Bucket List First."

Arizona Gems for the Rockhounding Dummy (Minerals Week 1)

Some people prospect for gems, Bob!

A surprising number of posts about minerals have come across our desk in recent weeks, enough that the staffers decided that it was time for another "theme week." This time, it's Minerals Week. Here to show that some freelancers will say anything just to collect a few pennies, even if they can't tell a mineral from a hole in the ground, is eHowian Robert Adams. Robert's post "How to Find Gems in Southern Arizona"¹ (OurPastimes.com) was of particular interest to our staff geologist, a graduate of the U of A: Bear Down, Wildcats!

A Dummies Guide to Northern Arizona

Monument Valley Mittens

For our money (which ain't much, let us tell you!), some of the most... troubling? freelancers on the 'net are the armchair travelers. We're talking about the people who posted hundreds of reviews of hotels, restaurants, museums, and other destinations on sites like epinions.com and the many content farms out there. For some, it was obvious that the reams of information they posted were merely distilled from guidebooks and online sources. And then there were the "helpful" types, such as Helium travel channel manager Isabelle Esteves, who didn't actually claim to have been there – they just gave "suggestions"... suggestions like "Places to Visit in Northern Arizona," which Iz reposted to WritEdge.com¹ after Helium died.

Learning Houston, the Dummies Version

Brandenberg's "Houston" in black box

Among some of the most hilarious – some might call them "annoying" – freelance articles our research staff uncover are travel articles written by people who've never even visited the destination. Some freelancers specialize in this content, spreading the same second- or third-hand information across multiple websites (see an example). We don't know where today's DotD candidate lives, since it's not in her profile, but one of our staffers knows the city of Houston, Texas, quite well – and he's not all that convinced that Denise Brandenberg did a good job with "Ideas for a Scavenger Hunt in Houston."¹

As Brandenberg relates in her introduction,

Chicago Hotels for Traveling Dummies

Chicago skyline at night

It's been a while since 1) we put a clothespin on our collective nose and visited Seekyt.com and also since 2) we awarded a DotD for fake travel advice. No more: today, we address both deficiencies; and boy, did that make our head hurt! It hurts because Seekyt.com is home to some of the most outrageously spun content on the internet, and today's candidate post is a classic case of the genre. The dumbass responsible for this mess is Lokesh Saini, who posts at several pay-per-view sites under variations of the handle nonyss. This time, he's telling everyone that "The Hotels in Chicago Provide Utmost Comfort!!" [those are his/her/its exclamation points, not ours...]

Black Canyon of the Gunnison for Dummies

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

If you were to take a vote of the Antisocial Network staffers, their favorite place on earth would most likely be the Colorado Plateau. The great highland that surrounds the Four Corners region is quite probably topographically unique, not to mention downright gorgeous. That may be why one of the staffers was taken aback by the misinformation spread across HubPages by Richard Francis Fleck (juneaukid) in a post he called "Our National Parks: Black Canyon of the Gunnison: A Place of Wonder."

Several of our staffers are quite familiar with the Black Canyon, although not the version Fleck describes... Richard opens his little travelogue by telling his readers,

Arizona Statehood, a Dummy Explanation

Map of Arizona

One of our founders used to write for a well-known but now-defunct site that published product reviews from "everyday people." After the site implemented member forums, it was common to find an ongoing discussion, often flame-filled, of the notion that everyone can write well. He was in the "That's bullshit!" camp, arguing that it's just as unlikely as everyone being able to sing well or everyone being a better-that-average golfer: the bell curve is just not in favor of the notion. That doesn't stop some folks from trying desperately to get better through practice -- and, they seem to think, "If you have to practice, you might as well get paid for it!" That's apparently the mantra of Isabelle Esteves, who flogs a keyboard for WritEdge.com (and a few other places); specializing in semifactual and poorly written travel advice, among other topics. Today, Iz is going to tell everyone "How Arizona Became a State."¹

Visiting Indianapolis for the Dummy Traveler

Indianapolis Children's Museum

It's time to take another look at fake travel reviews again, and with the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 (the iconic auto racing event, no matter what NASCAR fans say), we thought we'd take another look at the Crossroads of America. We've already caught serial armchair traveler Isabelle Esteves pretending to have visited Indy, so we thought we'd see who else out there likes to write fake travel reviews. It took just one google search – indianapolis site:hubpages.com – to turn up a bit of badly-spun content some lazy, self-appointed "freelance writer" had apparently lifted from the city's tourism bureau. The culprit this time? HubPages.com's Arthurart, who performed a not particularly scintillating bit of copy-mangling in a post he called "What to See in Indianapolis."¹

Indianapolis for Dummy Visitors

Children's Museum of Indianapolis

We have a staffer or two here at the Antisocial Network who've done some traveling over their real-life careers (one's been on six continents...) so we find it so-called "travel" reviews simply harvested from chamber of commerce PR releases rather irritating; especially those written by people who it's pretty obvious have never actually visited the featured destination. We also have a staffer who's lived in Indianapolis... twice. So he was somewhat taken aback to find repeat offender Isabelle Esteves holding forth on "Three good reasons to visit Indianapolis, Ind." for the fake (and now defunct)¹ news site Examiner.com (which, we suspect, she repurposed from her account at another dead website, Helium.com). We did wonder what other Indianapolis Izzy might have been thinking about, since (as far as we know) there's only one.²

Spanish for Dummy Travelers

Spanish spoken here

One of the staff at the Antisocial Network says that he's qualified to be a world traveler because, or so he claims, he can say "beer" in ten different languages. He admits that he's at a slight disadvantage in some countries, however, because he can only say "bathroom" in nine of them (rim shot!). We can't confirm his count, but we do know that he can say "Una cerveza, por favor," and after quatro o cinco cervezas, he can ask "¿Donde esta el baño?" with the best of them. It makes no difference that, or so we've been told, he speaks Spanish with a French accent. Even if that's true, it's a safe bet he's more fluent than Louie Doverspike, who totally screwed the pooch by pretending to share his expertise in "Common Spanish Words" for USAToday TravelTips (another Demand Media website). God help anyone who needed that advice...

Texas Hill Country for the Dummy Tourist

Map of the Texas Hill Country

Do you like to travel? So do many of the staffers at the Antisocial Network, though some are more content to curl up in a comfy armchair with a good book. Whichever you prefer, you probably know that every nook and cranny of North America (and probably the world) is described somewhere online in stunning verbiage by the local tourist council. Of course, that's not nearly enough for you if you're in the mood for visiting some out-of-the-way places or sampling something beyond the usual tourist digs. If you're not the kind of person who vacations in Buenos Aires yet still eats at TGI Friday, you probably do your research online. Let's just hope you don't find too much information like the twaddle published at InfoBarrel.com by InfoJunkie in "Texas Hill Country: Relax, Shop, Play, Unwind in Hill Country."

Alaska for Armchair Traveling Dummies

Climbing a glacier on Mt. Rainier, Washington (not Alaska)

We've heard it said that travel research is one of the most common of web searches, which is probably why every content farm has had a travel section with a slew of self-appointed travel mavens. The biggest problem with the information these people provide seems to be that, at least for some of them, their only traveling is on the internet itself and through the contents of outdated guidebooks. These people are perfectly willing to write about the "best restaurants" in Tashkent or the "finest accommodations for families" in Katmandu even though they've never even been on the same continent. The 'net is the great travel agent, we guess. On WritEdge.com, we found an article penned by New Englander Isabel Esteves, a little piece she titled "Alaska Adventure Vacation Destination."¹ Izzy likes to republish her articles from the late, unlamented Helium.com, where she was the chief travel maven. Most are already bad enough, but when she doesn't even bother to update her "information"? Ugh...

Here: have a look at one of Esteves' more... inane statements about Alaska:

Compasses for Total Dummies

Simple magnetic compass

At the content farm formerly known as eHow.com – heck, still known as eHow.com – it's amusing to watch the house dumbasses thrash about to find enough factoids to meet the site's minimum word count, especially for simple questions. Take, for example, "Why Do People Use the Compass?"; answered, sort of, by the one of our most prolific dumbasses, Naima Manal at Sciencing.com. Not only does Naima drag in all manner of semirelated factoids to address the topic, she gets several of them... stupid. Take, for instance, 

"[A compass] is an instrument composed of a suspended magnetic pointer that is attracted to the polarity of the North Pole."

Austin, Texas, for Dummies

Welcome to the Live Music Capital of the World

Come summer; it's vacation time. Once you've chosen a relaxing destination, you will of course – this being the information age – google things to do once you've arrived at your destination. People like Isabelle Esteves of WritEdge.com long ago figured that out. People like Izzy are happy to share their broad experience of the destination with you - the chief problem being that their experience consists of googling the destination and doing a copy-and-paste job. Take, for instance, Ms Esteves' recent advice about "Things to Do In Austin, Texas In the Summer"¹ [grammatical error in original].