Wine Rack Instructions for Dummies

No instructions needed, ParaGod

Among the many reasons we find to (metaphorically) slap around greed-sucking freelancers, one can be especially vexing. It's bad enough when someone tried to tell you how to perform a DIY project and botches it because of lack of knowledge and/or experience, but the ones who roll out a bait-and-switch and never even try to provide a guide? They take the cake! "They" being today's nominee, ParaGod, with her InfoBarrel.com post, "How To Build Your Own Wine Rack For Free Or Cheap."

Iron for Dummies

Iron smelter

It's been a long, long time since the last time we exposed a freelancer toiling away at the now essentially moribund content farm InfoBarrel.com; but we recently happened upon some garbage content published courtesy of one of the site's owners, Kevin Hinton. Apparently Hinton's education in business and computer science was somewhat light on hard science, especially chemistry, which may explain why he included a number of boo-boos in the post he titled "Interesting Facts About Iron (Fe)."¹

Directional Drilling for Dummies

Mud motor basics

The staff petroleum geologist doesn't stick his head up all that often these days, but we though we'd prevail upon him to share a little of his knowledge about the oil business (aka the "awl bidness"). After all, we see a massive amount of misinformation here from freelancers whose only exposure to the industry is the local BP station. Heck, our guy consulted to BP several times. Whatever the case, we're knocking out two birds with one stone here, not only putting rock guy back in harness, but checking up on Infobarrel.com¹ as well. That's where we found John Crew attempting to explain "Oil Field Jobs: The Directional Driller."

Flint's Water Problem, the Dummy Solution

Flint water

Staffers here at the Antisocial Network pride themselves on being well-informed, not only about their favorite science and DIY topics but also about current events. We're pretty certain that anyone here can name at least eight of the nine justices of SCOTUS; can you?¹ But enough about that: today's DotD candidate has been here before, precisely because of a failure to comprehend complex current events. Dalo (of InfoBarrel.com) is back again, this time with "An Idea for the Flint Water Crisis."²

Door Hinges for DIY Dummies

Shim for door hinge

We just noticed that it had been a while since we featured some of the unconstrained freelancers who ply their trade at InfoBarrel.com. While the website is a classic example of a moribund content farm, with only a few people still writing there, almost all of their old content still lives in all its scruffy glory. Today's DotD nominee, then, is two-site dumbass Maxwell Payne, here to misinform his readers about "How to Adjust Hinges to Make Room Doors Close Flush."¹

Electric Drills for the Total Dummy

Cordless power drill

Just about nothing frosts the Antisocial Network staffers' collective hiney like a freelancer who cobbles together information from a couple of sources, rewords it, and claims it as his or her own. Doing so is especially irritating when the subject is something about which the freelancer knows little or nothing, but holds himself out as some sort of "expert." We've already caught InfoBarrel.com's 44tracyann44 pretending she knows something about drop ceilings and jig saws. Let's see how big a dummy she is when the topic is "Portable Electric Drill Facts and Safety Tips."¹

Glaciers for Clueless Dummies

alpine glacier with medial moraines

We are sure that there are plenty of homeschoolers out there who do an excellent job of preparing their children for the real world, though we rather suspect the excellent scores come of their students get on standardized tests are more the result of extreme "teaching to the test" than excellence in education. Face statistics: just like medical doctors, half of all homeschoolers are in the bottom half of their avocation... which brings us to today's candidate, Joannie Ham, and the little ditty she published at InfoBarrel.com called "5 Questions About Glaciers."

Squirrel-proofing the Clueless Way

Squirrel baffle on bird feeder pole

You know those click-bait images that show up everywhere these days -- like "the government of [your location here] doesn't want you to know about this one simple trick..." and similar crap? That's bait-and-switch, and it's far from the first time it's been used on the internet. Back when content farms were running wild and people could rake in the bucks for the most trivial crap, people like ParaGod at InfoBarrel.com were everywhere, dumping out crappy content like "Bird Feeders Squirrel Proof Can Preserve Bird Seed And Save Money."¹ Talk about keyword stuffing: that title doesn't even make sense!

All Hail the Dummy Way!

Hail damage on a car

We've noticed over the years that freelance dumbassery seems to be most common at sites where contributors choose from "pre-seeded" titles (e.g., eHow.com). That doesn't mean that self-proclaimed experts on everything don't spread their bull across HubPages and similar sites, though the latter seem to feature somewhat more content from people who know that they're talking about -- at least now. Back in the bad old days, though, such bullshit artists were everywhere hoping to craft a keyword-rich post and title that would go viral. About zero did, but that never stopped anyone... and it didn't stop InfoBarrel.com¹ writer Mariuski when s/he tried to explain "How Can Hail Damage a Car?"

Miter Saws for the Dummy Carpenter

Hitachi C8FSE Sliding Power Miter Saw

In a world where hyperbole apparently rules, overstatement and exaggeration are acceptable and only bald-faced lies are not allowed [NOTE: this was written pre-Trump]. Of course, politics is the exception to even that lack of rules – but we digress. As far as the money-grubbers among freelancers are concerned, anything you want to say that might pull in eyeballs is fair game, even if the statement is demonstrably stupid or untrue. That's why we've singled out today's DotD, a gent who chose the name PowerToolExpert (real name Dustin Fredrickson) at InfoBarrel.com¹ and dashed off boatloads of nearly identical "reviews" of tools for a few weeks back in 2009 (not content with the bucks he was making there, Dustin bought his own domain (now defunct) where he publishes his half-assed content to this day). As for the reviews (and Dustin's claimed "expertise"), we took a look at an example he called "Hitachi Miter Saw": not a very... SEO-y title, eh?

Replacing a Water Heater for Dummies

Note TPR valve at right

An old joke says, "How can you tell when a lawyer is lying? His lips are moving." Yes, we know, a lot of lawyers are women – so sue us (rimshot). Whatever the case, when it comes to DIY, we have a similar riddle for freelancers: "How can you tell a freelancer is lying? He says the job is 'easy.'" We caught Alecia Gibson, a.k.a. AllyG47, over at Infobarrel.com telling us that replacing a water heater is an easy job when she wrote "Water Heater Installation," and we were pretty certain she was lying about ever having done this, because the very first sentence in her article is

"Water heater installation is an easy do-it-yourself project. Anyone can do it and it only takes a few hours."

It has been our experience that nothing involving large-scale plumbing jobs is "easy," which suggests to us that Alecia may have watched a professional plumber (with an assistant) perform this activity, but she's never some close to doing it herself. In the first place, Ally doesn't know the names of the tools:

Choosing a Pipe Wrench for Dummies

Pipe wrench jaws

Any home-repair task involving plumbing, at least beyond basic faucet repair or swapping out shower heads, will require the use of a pipe wrench. That's why a version of this tool shows up in just about every DIYer's home toolkit once he or she gets past the hammer-plus-pliers-plus-cordless drill stage. It's probably why InfoBarrel.com's Robert VanNorden shared his thoughts about one brand of these tools in his post "The Best Pipe Wrenches Money Can Buy Online";¹ essentially a thinly-disguised set of links to Amazon.com padded out with some lousy text to meet the site's minimum word count. Our first question, of course, was, "Are there better wrenches you can't buy online?"

Anyway, we're not here to argue with VanNorden's assertion that the Ridgid brand of pipe wrenches is simply the best, or even that a pro could benefit from the significant weight advantage of the brand's aluminum wrenches as opposed to cast iron. We're pretty sure they beat the cheap house-brand wrenches you can get at Lowe's or HomeDepot (not to mention that Chinese-made Tekton brand Amazon keeps trying to push on us whenever we buy tools). No, we're here to wonder why someone who claims to be both "a writer" and a "retired heating contractor" does so bad a job of describing this tool. Says Robert,

Changing Kitchen Sinks for Dummies

This is what a sink looks like, Andrew

Freelancers: you've got to love 'em! Well, actually you don't. If these self-appointed "jacks of some trades, masters of none" of the world-wide web restricted themselves to writing about topics for which they have expertise or experience, most of them would have had to quit after about three posts. That never stops the worst of them, though — they'll throw everything but the kitchen sink into their portfolios... in fact, some of them have thrown the kitchen sink into their portfolios. Yep, we're talkin' Andrew Hsu (aka AndrewtheMandrew) of InfoBarrel.com, here caught trying to tell his readers "How to Change a Kitchen Sink."

Adjustable Wrenches for Dummies

A bunch of wrenches for Jaron's benefit

In the days when a freelancer could just about barf on the screen and still pick up a few bucks for publishing the results, there were two sorts of sites: places like Helium and eHow had lists of "assignments," while other sites let writers publish any damned thing they wanted to. The second model led to some extreme "publishing" by people who, frankly, didn't know jack about what they were saying. A search of their online profiles could often find as many as twenty, thirty, even fifty posts a day at one site, and some were spinning the same content at multiple sites. Small wonder Google Panda-ed those sites into the ash can of history. For today, let's look at the output of one of those floggers, Jaron (WriterGuy) at InfoBarrel.com, whose ignorance is out there for all to see in "Best Cheap Adjustable Wrenches."

Subduction For Dummies

Cross-section of Mariana arc and trench

The staffers at the Antisocial Network all try to be lifelong learners. They enjoy gleaning bits of information and picking up new knowledge wherever it might appear. That may be why some potentially interesting content we've found floating around in cyberspace has turned out to be so disappointing. It's disappointing because it combines new and interesting information with old and irritating mistakes. A case in point is today's nominee for our infamous award, Moina Arcee (real name Mark Fellows?) of InfoBarrel.com. Moina combined fascinating facts with misinformation in "Life In The Mariana Trench"¹ – our problem is that given how badly s/he mangled what we already knew, we don't know what to trust in the rest of it...

Water Heater Maintenance for Dummies

Typical water heater

As research staffers at the Antisocial Network comb the internet looking for idiotic statements and misinformation from the keyboards of self-appointed freelancers, from time to time the cube farm echoes with howls of laughter. You gotta know, some of these people say the stupidest things; but the best are the ones who pretend expertise by writing multiple, related articles. Take, for instance, meggie over at InfoBarrel.com¹: we nailed her... err, "singled her out" a few months go for pretending she knew something about water heaters. It seems she decided to spin her (lack of) expertise into a second article on the topic. We suspect her home's water heater went tits-up, so she decided to write about what the Meggie household did wrong with the old one and what they bought to replace it. Sadly, she did a lousy job both times, including the latest piece she titled "Water Heater Maintenance."

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."

Roofs for Dummies

Rooftop patio

We've seen some pretty interesting do-it-yourself projects featured on the internet over the years we've been harpooning freelancing fools. We've found carpentry projects where the instructions don't match the parts list, building projects that don't build what they say they will, even instructions that are just plain wrong. It's fairly rare that we find a writeup on a DIY project that is, to be frank, dangerously stupid; but they're out there, just like the free-flowing river of candidates for the Darwin Award. As evidence, submitted for your consideration is Pedro de Almedia of InfoBarrel.com, who shares with the world his instructions for "How to Install Paving Stones on the Roof of Your House."¹

Conspiracies: an Obsession for Dummies

Map of Bermuda "triangle"

Of all the dummies on the planet, we're pretty sure the dumbest of them are the conspiracy theorists – the tinfoil-hat types, the black-helicopter spotters, the fake-moon-landing folk. No fact too damning to their theory can survive their peculiar, circular logic; and no tangentially related factoid is too trivial to be woven into their narrative of "truth." With that in mind, take a look at "The Science Behind the Bermuda Triangle" as presented by zig25 (Paul? Paula?) on InfoBarrel.com.¹ Bear in mind, of course, that this is a freelancer who has also turned his/her finely-honed intellect on topics such as Jack the Ripper, the Biblical flood, the Hope diamond, crop circles, the "truth" of the Kennedy assassination, the "truth" of Tupac Shakur's death, Atlantis, the Loch Ness monster and others... all in prose badly in need of a grammar-checker.

Pergola Construction for Dummies (Carpentry Week 2)

Typical pergola

If you're in search of help for your latest DIY project, chances are you've already consulted with your favorite search engine, very likely searching on the phrase "how to build..." You probably got a gazillion results, and some of them were basically useless. "Useless" can mean a lot of things, but one of them is the old bait-and-switch. That's when you think you're going to get project plans and other useful information, but instead there's just blather stuffed with keywords. 

Take, for instance, "Building A Pergola Takes Patience And Enthusiasm," written by annakec (Anna Kec, aka Anna Damis) at InfoBarrel.com.¹ You'd expect to find at least something about how to build a pergola, right? But here's what you're going to get from Anna's post: