The World Wide Web is a vast fountain of knowledge that can teach us anything from tying our shoelaces properly to building a garden shed. But the more people referred to the internet for instructions, the more weird the tutorials became! So here we have the oddest step-by-step guides that make us very concerned about those who requested them.
Parental revenge
WikiHow is just asking for trouble with their article titled How to Get Back at Your Parents. It is an eight-step-long guide with harsh revenge tips including sneaking into their bedroom and stealing their cell phone, typing an essay on their computer titled “Why I Hate My Parents”, and hiding their cigarettes so it will drive them nuts, but you’ll still turn out “the good guy”. Step eight takes the biscuit though, telling the child to use emotional blackmail against the parent by threatening to leave!
The class mermaid
Mermaids are a hot new fashion trend amongst teenagers, we know that much! But WikiHow’s post on How to Act Like a Mermaid at School is probably taking things a step too far. It starts by telling you to research mermaid-life via watching movies and reading books, wear ocean colours and accessories – fair enough. But things get weird later down the guide when it tells you to ‘act alert when people talk about the ocean’, panic when you come into contact with water and, strangest of all, change the subject when classmates talk about mermaids. So, essentially this article is telling you to act ‘mermaid’ enough for people to suspect you, but not enough so that they outright reveal your identity – like you’re an aquatic Hannah Montana.
Counting sausages
How to Calculate Pi by Throwing Frozen Hot Dogs seems like a joke guide at first, but it goes into so much detail you start to wonder if people are actually taking it seriously. Pi is one of those sums that gets taught over and over in maths class, and the majority of us know it equates to 3.14. So why we’d need to throw away good food in order to work out something we already know, is incomprehensible.
Jet ‘black’ lag
Being goth is a lot harder than it looks, especially when going abroad. A true goth must keeping following the subculture at all times, so WikiHow kindly made a step-by-step guide entitled How to Look Goth While Traveling for a Long Time on a Plane – phew! It’s tips include wearing casual clothing, simple makeup and jeans or black pants. Wait… doesn’t that describe the majority of flight-goers anyway?
Removing the evidence
If the police don’t catch the bad guy, they have WikiHow to blame. They have a tutorial that shows 8 Ways to Clean a Blood Stain from Car Upholstery including saltwater, hydrogen peroxide and good old dish soap and hot water. Let’s just hope the people searching for this guide had a passenger with a paper cut!
Catty Xmas
WikiHow knows that not everybody likes to be kind during the holidays, so they designed the perfect guide on How to Give Passive Aggressive Gifts for Christmas. It offers a list of ideas such as giving free hotel-room soaps, a ‘cheap and nasty diary’, a frame with an ugly picture of the person, and a badly homemade gift. The worst suggestion is number 6, which tells the buyer to give diet drinks, fitness DVDs and clothing that is too small in order to suggest the receiver needs to lose weight. Glad tidings, everybody!
To be bone idle
For a person who’s always on the go there’s How to Do Nothing. Steps include finding a quiet place to sit and read, just sitting and clearing your thoughts, and sleeping. Some may argue that these tasks are indeed ‘something’, but apparently not. This article is a lot more complex than it ever needs to be.
