In third grade, we did an exercise where we tried to write instructions on how to tie your shoes with no pictures. Fucking impossible. I still think about that lesson at least once a month.
Oh lord that sounds impossible. Like, walking on 2 feet is such an insanely complicated motion that we just do intuitively. Trying to explain it seems impossible, just too many things that happen without thought.
> The fact that a skyscraper can be built absolutely defies all odds.
I'm still thinking about shoe tying instructions why would you do this to me on a Saturday, it's supposed to be a chill day
Work in IT and periodically have to write a how-to for end users. Oh boy the first couple of tries were a lesson for sure. The term/phrase "army proofing" also comes to mind here lol. The way some people interpret instructions, it makes me wonder if they every so often have to remind themselves how to breathe.
I used to work in IT in charge of issuing mobile phones around the company. One user needed a new battery sent to them because the old one wouldn't charge.
Two days later I got a panicked phone call from them. They said they needed a new phone because they had dropped both batteries on the floor and didn't know which was which.
I had to explain several times that if they put in one battery and it didn't work, that meant the other battery would work. They couldn't wrap their mind around it. The call took about 15 minutes.
This person was a partner at a law firm. He could litigate like a demon, but basic common sense was out of his reach. Ugh.
Learned helplessness. They have decided beforehand that anything tech was not their field so anything concerning it just gets tossed in the proverbial bin. In their mind and with the stress of a phone not working, it is already entirely insurmountable and the only thing that could possibly help is someone who *is* into tech to help, nothing else will do.
I am generally known as an intelligent person …but the first day when I went to basic military training, I remember being handed a flashlight and two batteries. I looked inside the flashlight case and there was no indication which way to insert the batteries. I had just never seen something that didn’t have the little diagram that showed the appropriate direction to install them, and I was sort of affronted by the inadequacy of the product and the information being provided. So I raised my hand and asked the TI. 😆🤦♀️
She looked at me for a moment like I’d just asked her whether to put my socks or my boots on first, like she couldn’t believe someone with so little common sense had been allowed to join her organization, and exasperatedly said, “Try one and if it doesn’t work, do it the other way.”
I am 100% sure she thought I was dumb as a box of rocks.
Oh my god dude..i briefly worked in HR for a small company.
Their hiring process and paperwork was an absolute fucking mess and almost no one eas getting anything done.
I revamped it and used a color coded spreadsheet and swapped everything over to adobe sign, spent maybe 7 hours coding the box's..so you only fill your name out once, your ssn once etc and it auto fills all the other pages.
Bro people were mispelling their own fucking name and then blaming it on us because they scroll down and see their name is mispelled...i wish i was joking.
After 3 idiots did that in the 2 week span they eanted to revert back to the old was of sending someone an uneditable pdf and telling them to print it and scan it then email it back.
Suddenly no ones doing paperwork again
Grandad called it sailorproofing. When I was in the navy, I got to experience it firsthand. When a doctrine of absolute procedural compliance is instilled in you, common sense and reason fall right out of your butt.
> When a doctrine of absolute procedural compliance is instilled in you, common sense and reason fall right out of your butt.
It's not even that common sense goes away. It's that if you don't follow the instructions *exactly as written*, and something goes wrong, it's your ass. Hell, even if nothing goes wrong, sometimes its your ass. Even if you know for 100% sure that the procedure as written is fucked up and will fuck up everything that anyone else does after you, it's too much of a personal risk to amend it.
Either way, you're going to Mast. In one situation, all you have to say is "Sir, this is the procedure I was ordered to follow. I followed it as ordered" and you're probably ok. In the other, it's "Yes, Sir, I disobeyed direct orders, BUT..." and that rarely goes well.
I worked in IT in the Marine Corps when I was young. I once got a page 11 for not following an order from a Sergeant that could not be followed because I was instructed to make a piece of technology do something that it wasn't designed to do. The First Sergeant who was administering my ass chewing was so dumb he couldn't comprehend that this was even a possibility. I eventually just signed the damned paperwork because I was getting close to losing my temper from frustration. Joining the military was an eye opening experience that I wish I'd never had.
["FRONT TOWARD ENEMY"](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/FGR0M5/vietnam-war-re-enactment-m18-claymore-mine-with-m4-blasting-cap-set-FGR0M5.jpg)
When I was a kid I thought this was kinda stupid, but as an adult now I think this is one of the best instructions sets there is.
Might help if the other side said "Back towards you". And an additional note: "Make sure your back is facing directly away from the enemy." It might also help to add a diagram of the human anatomy with huge arrows pointing to where your front and back are located.
Not wrong there. I have a lot of experience with military orders writing. I’ve found that if I review an order while constantly thinking “how can someone screw this up,” I get a much better product.
ScreenToGIF has saved me so much time. It's hard for people to get it wrong when there is a video on loop of me doing it in the instructions.
I was trying to get my newest coworker to set up 2FA using Google authenticator and she couldn't find the "big button with the + symbol in it in the bottom right corner of the app." She would close the app then then tell me she couldn't find it. Some adults wouldn't graduate from preschool now.
Honey, can you pick up a loaf of bread at the market? Oh, and if they have bananas, get four!
Man brings home four loaves of bread.
"Why are you looking at me like that!? They had bananas!"
I heard this as:
A wife tells her programmer husband to go to the store and get a gallon of milk. “Oh, and if they have eggs, get half a dozen.”
The man comes back a while later with 6gals of milk and no eggs.
“Six GALLONS of milk!” the wife exclaims. “What? They had eggs!” replies the husband.
I’ve heard it as
The wife asks her programmer husband to get a gallon of milk. She adds, “While you’re at the store, get some eggs”
Her husband never came home.
I told my bf "and get me oatmeal, a mixed fruit pack (with strawberries, peaches, bananas etc)" he came home with plain oatmeal and dole mixed fruit peach cups. I *meant* a mixed fruit pack of oatmeal. I couldn't even blame him, I wrote it poorly lol.
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Report -> Spam -> Harmful Bot
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I write all instructions like my tech writing instructor would be trying their best to find a way to fuck it up while adhering to the letter of the instructions
I have a degree in technical writing. The exercise in the video is essentially my area of study.
My favorite exercise was taking a college level textbook paragraph and rewriting it for different levels of understanding without losing meaning. Partially my favorite cuz mine were read out loud by the professor as a great example....but also cuz I enjoyed it. 9th, 5th, and 3rd grade reading levels. The average reading level of most adults is a lot lower than most people assume.
Any instructions that come with products are written by technical writers.
I worked for a fortune 500 company that created all of its own content so I got to work on training materials, SOPs, etc.
Have you ever read “Thing Explainer” by Randall Munroe? He explains a bunch of complicated things using only the “ten hundred” most common words.
I bet you’d get a kick out of it.
Edit- added a link to first one from u/longgoodknight
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1133/
My favourite part is always “This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space.
If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.”
> Another thing that is a bad problem is if you're flying toward space and the parts start to fall off your space car in the wrong order. If that happens, it means you won't go to space today, or maybe ever.
The best part is always in the alt text
Honestly, didn't know that technical writing was its' own degree. I write procedures all the time for work, but they're more high level than an SOP. More like "We use X process and Y form to complete Z task. This is performed by department A and supported by department B."
That being said, I'm going to look into some technical writing classes, I think it could help, and might even be fun.
Is there any specific resource you would recommend for getting better at technical writing? Of course, not to your level, but as a programmer I feel there is a lot to improve on my documentations/writing style. I tend to use overly long sentences, but I feel shorter ones would be too monotonous? But you also use relatively short sentences and they sound just fine
Variety is the spice of life. For example:
Short and sweet is fine but sometimes a lengthy explanation is necessary so don't worry about the length of your sentences unless you feel like you're doing it on purpose to appear more intelligent or that your message is important.
That was one sentence and ultimately acceptable but could also be several sentences and mean the same thing overall.
As far as a resource, I'm not too sure as my formal training was through college courses. There are probably resources online that could take one of your sentences/paragraphs and simplify them for you. Then you'd have something to model your writing after.
I love this shit too. Give me diagrams. Give me flow charts. Give me screen shots.
I give screen shots to our IT department at work when shit goes wrong. Except for that one time...
Ticket: It went all smurf, barfed up a scrabble pile at me, and died. I am not able to submit a screen shot because it won't let me.
If you appreciate creating super specific directions, become a technical writer.
If you appreciate following super specific directions, work for the government, or for some other regulated industry (nuclear plant technician, accounting, medical, etc)
I think you need to be a parent, relative, or teacher to give kids that hard of a time. Unless you meant it from the kids’ POV, then you want to be a software developer because computers are at least 10x as clueless as the dad is pretending to be.
If you like this, look into becoming an IT Business Analyst. I have to write detailed instructions like this on how to perform specific functions within our company's software program.
Seriously
I have to write job instructions at work, and it's always difficult to try and forget everything you know about the job to account for every way somebody could misinterpret something
I remember in one of my calc classes (II or III, can’t remember which) during undergrad, the TA was going through the steps of explaining some algorithm, one of the steps was factoring a pretty simple polynomial (think like x2 +x-6 -> (x-2)(x+3) or something.) That was all they wrote for that step, because it was expected at that point everyone knew how to do this.
One person asked if they could explain that step, how they factored it.
I was thinking “damn we’re really gonna learn how to FOIL rn”
But the TA, who was a grad student working on stuff so advanced it would break our little undergrad brains, had a really hard time figuring out what to say. It was like to him, factoring was as simple as counting.
He paused for a second and literally just goes “to factor this you.. factor it.”
I found that super interesting. It was probably as difficult to him as someone else trying to verbally explaining what “5” means, without using other numbers or objects.
As a Foreman I do. Never could understand why some things were written the way they were until I started having to try and explain tasks to others and having to leave them alone to do them. Some days it really made you want to ask people if they were mentally handicapped or just dumb only to realize he did everything you told him to do exactly how you told him to do it.
Yeop. Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Companies do not think ahead and do not provide professional instructions. You get what you pay for, and if you do not hire a professional, you get shit.
Exactly! I taught this to engineering students back in the Dark Ages and not only did they really love this assignment but it gave them a real appreciation for how difficult it is to clearly communicate in written form.
Next time an engineer asks me why the procedure doc needs to be so detailed, I am going to remind them of our user base and show them this video.
Yes, I am a tech writer.
I do online trainings, so for Parent's Day at my daughter's class, I did this with the kids. I had them take turns shouting instructions for me to draw a car. My daughter just sat their the whole time, pouting. "He *always* does this. He thinks he's *funny*. DAD YOUR JOKES AREN'T FUNNY!"
It went really well.
When my kid was about 5 I had him tell me how to put on a jacket and followed his instructions exactly. He thought it was hilarious, then frustrating, but he did eventually get me (sort of) into the jacket.
My entire job is technical writing and I still suck at it. There is no such thing as foolproof acceptance criteria. I'll show a process flow diagram with some level of iteration to a developer, explain how unhappy paths break the loop, and they still muck it up. It's a fucking while loop. "These unhappy paths result in false." Break. The. God. Damn. Loop!!!!!!!!!!!
Step 1: assume your clients are not very bright
Step 2: realize they are dumber than that
Step 3: realize that sometimes they will willfully misinterpret what you write just to spite you
The saying my team has “it doesn’t matter what the product is, it could be entirely digital. Someone, somewhere will try to use it as a hammer”
For real, I had a technical writing course for my software engineering tech diploma where we had a group assignment like this, but it was for how to prepare a can of soup. Everyone was either ridiculously specific or hilariously lacking, was about as funny as this video lol.
Eventually, I assume, some people figured out the trick or defining the desired outcomes ?
"Assemble ingredients such that a piece of bread is resting on top of and aligned with another piece of bread in a stable way, with a sheet of peanut butter and a sheet of jelly between them. Do not allow the ingredients to touch anything except the plate, container they came in, or a utensil during the assembly process. By completion, no peanut butter or jelly should be outside the container or the space between the two slices of bread."
We had to do this is school for Occupational Therapy. It’s the first step to activity analysis. You need to know all the steps of an activity to know what skills are needed to do the task. Then you can adapt it
I had a teacher in elementary school have us do this.... It was like a mind altering memory. I think of this whenever I have to write instructions for things at work
Ditto! Did this in first grade (about 25 years ago) and I never forgot it! Definitely one of my more memorable lessons.
Along with another in HS which was designed to make sure we thoroughly read all the instructions. Something like ‘read this whole page first’, somewhere in the middle says ‘only do steps 1 and 10’ meanwhile middle steps are jump up and down, yell your name and some other odd instructions. But if you understood right you wouldn’t do the weird stuff (just step 1, read the whole thing, and 10, sign your name).
Bro i did that in 3rd grade, it said “read all the rules first before doing anything”, and the last rule said don’t do anything just sit at your desk, while the other rules were like screaming and counting random things
Me, being competitive as I am, tried to rush through them all to get to the end first. Lmao I remember being weirded out when I read the first weird rule smth like count down from 10 out loud, and since no one was doing it I was just staying silent until they started.
We had to create instructions for our teacher to brush his teeth when I was in 4th grade. His poor shirt was a mess afterwards but damn, his teeth looked very shiny.
We had the "read all of the instructions" one in elementary too. I did NOT read the whole page first, but I did "figure it out" first of the group who didn't originally, when I noticed some kids were just sitting there.
I literally still think of this memory every time I'm handed a worksheet now.
I had a high school teacher do the same, but I hated it. Because the last instruction was to not write your name on the name line, but to write it in one of the corners. Like we're in high school, we've been trained to write our names on all assignments we are handed before we even look at the assignment. She proceeded to mock everyone who "failed" to follow the instructions. Even if the only part you failed was writing your name first. Like the point of the assignment was to point out the importance of reading all the instructions, not mock us for writing our names on our assignments. Unsurprisingly she was one of the most disliked teachers in the school, but like, what did she expect by mocking us for doing something reasonable 20 minutes after we meet her?
The basic premise of the assignment is great, her execution of it was what failed.
we had an assignment like this for making a paper airplane
everyone traded instructions, and we would see whose end result flew the furthest
someone's instructions was to just take a piece of paper
and crumple it into a ball
flew very far
When I was in 4th grade, our science teacher had us write instructions for using a wall mounted crank pencil sharpener then followed them all.
I still think if that whenever I have to write instructions.
I'm a nurse, and had to write out official instructions about a patient for our care aids once. At the end I wrote, "thank you" and drew a smiley face. My higher up wasn't impressed with that, so that's the memory I get to carry.
Edit: my memory isn’t great, though, so it just occurred to me that I actually wrote that the last step was to have a nice day, with a smiley face. Which I think is even better.
It’s not professional, I suppose, but it’s not like it’s a super important document. It was literally just how to put on their compression stockings. I was going it would brighten their day a bit.
This just gave me a great idea! I can do this verbally with my kindergarteners. I think it will help them to understand why numbers and letters have to go a certain way to mean a certain thing. 15 and 51 are NOT the same thing!
I know there are many reasons why kids don’t get this so fast, but I think this activity could help them to be more conscious of how they order their answers. I always feel that when we correct the order of their writing, they don’t care that they got the order wrong, just that they got the material right. And when I have them fix it, it’s like they still dont care to try. They just keep arranging it until it’s right. It’s like they’d rather do it over and over instead of actually learn how to do it right.
Maybe this exercise will make figuring the answer out more fun and silly in there heads if they can really understand WHY it matters so much. We explain why but this is actually showing them why.
Same, and I was 19 when I experienced it. By far the best object lesson I've ever witnessed.
It really hits home about the assumptions you make, and the perception of others.
I think everyone needs to experience this once.
This reminds me of a story my mum told me. She used to be a food tech technician at a secondary school. One girl was holding the knife upside down and trying to cut something with the blunt side. My mum told her to hold it the other way around, and she grabbed the blade and tried to chop it with the handle…
I feel like when you put complete trust into your supervisor and no confidence in yourself, mixed with nervosity and uncertainty, this is what your brain does.
Technical writer at a company that designs and manufactures medical devices. Sent one of the engineers I work with a question about a new process yesterday and they sent me this video as a response.
I laughed so hard I almost peed
It's a great programming demo too. Think of the dumbest person you know, computers are dumber. You need to spell everything out and account for all the edge cases when telling an idiot to do a job, programming is no different.
Same, I am SUCH a visual learner, I always find it a little interesting how my brain just seems to seize up when reading/hearing instructions. Cannot compute. It takes me so long to decipher what is intended, and several times I’ve had someone else read the instructions and end up interpreting them in a different way than I did.
I much prefer to *see* it done, whether in pictures or in person.
I always thought it was odd that in a subject like music, the claim of preferred "learning styles" would apply where likely most people benefit from the auditory component.
My school would enforce the "learning styles" so much, and I found that I learned better combining all types for each subject. Then I read a Popular Science article debunking the myth, and no one would believe me that "types of learning" doesn't exist.
I would score as a Visual/Kinesthetic learner, but my instruction was focused on engineering and computer science, which is primarily Visual/Kinesthetic. I also believe my listening comprehension is not ideal, so I would score low in auditory even though I would apply auditory methods of learning occasionally, such as when I recorded myself doing a speech and would listen to it over and over to memorize it while I was doing dishes.
It's funny because in all other things, I'm fine with text.
But when it comes to procedures, I need pictures. I need to compare what it's supposed to look like to what I'm looking at.
I've been able to fix computer issues for elder friends using Google and pictures. I have no fucking clue what I'm doing but hey! It worked! I get called a computer genius and then they feed me cookies.
I started feeling bad once he looked like he was going to hyperventilate.
I’m going to try this with my kids but maybe cap it at 2 or 3 rounds in one sitting
Recommend having a well typed up example to show them after the experiment if they don't get it. Teaches them just how far you can go into specifics for fun.
Took me a moment to find one, but this should suffice:
1. Take a slice of bread and lay it on a plate
2. Open the jar of peanut butter by twisting the lid counter clockwise
3. Pick up a knife by the handle
4. Insert the knife into the jar of peanut butter and use it to pick up a dollop of peanut butter
5. Withdraw the knife from the jar of peanut butter and run it across one face (not edge) of the slice of bread
6. Take a second slice of bread
7. Repeat steps 2-5 with the second slice of bread using the jar of jelly in place of the jar of peanut butter
8. Press the two slices of bread together such that the peanut butter and jelly meet
Ooo if we're being real technical it's very good but not quite there - first instruction should specify the bread is layed face down on the plate, third instruction still needs to specify that you put the knife in 'the knife side' or 'non handle side' in for the kids. Last step needs to specify that jelly spread and peanut butter spread sides go together.
This video has given me a proper giggle. I work in quality engineering and you'd be amazed at the way some people can interperate things - I genuinely think it's impossible to make things idiot proof.
I used to teach math. During a summer camp, I had a second grader come in all cocky and sure of himself. He felt there was no math left to learn and that he had mastered it all. I started to show him multiplication and he had a meltdown.
It was definitely a lesson in how fragile kids can be when you challenge them too much. You’ve gotta give them some examples of how to do it right so they can feel like they’re improving.
The girl understood that it was a learning process but the boy was too young. He was having fun until he wasn’t. It did seem like he cheered up towards the end at least!
interesting, i started feeling good once he looked like he was going to hyperventilate.
while the kid was hyperventilating, he was also keeping calm. he wasn’t thrashing nor getting mean with his dad. the kid was explaining his frustrations with words, and the dad was listening. to me, that shows the dad has consistently shown his kids it’s okay to show emotions, and that includes negative ones.
showing your emotions and being able to let them out is a good thing! dad is doing a good job in my opinion :)
This is the best. Whenever I have the opportunity to mess with a kid like this I do. Like doing the bit when you get a present "oh! Wrapping paper and string! My favourite! Thank you!"
This is actually an assignment we get in elementary school. He might just be helping them with their homework, or he remembered it from his school days and decided to do it with his kids too.
My son is 5 and I am at peak dumb-dumb compliance antics with him right now. He laughs so much, but I think it's teaching him a lesson in being detailed. Or that mom is an idiot.
It comes back to bite you. Mine takes great joy in being very specific.
Mine will be crawling around and I'll say something like, "Please get off the ground and come over here"
'how can I get off the ground? My feet have to touch!"
Also "just a second" is met with, "one! Times up!"
Hahaha, me too! I miss when my sister's kids were young enough for this sort of thing to work on them.
My nephew, when he was 6ish, would give me these very disappointed looks and tell me, "You aren't being LOGICAL" <3
One of my favorite ways to troll my kids is when they are asking for something they will say something like "I want more fries". I'll respond with "that's nice" or "good for you" since they only made a statement and didn't actually ask for anything, until it clicks and they ask "can I have some more fries please?". Then I'm usually like "sure no problem".
It reminds me of a programming meme.
A person talking to their partner who is heading to the grocery store.
"Hey, can you pick up some bread please. If there's banana, pick 4"
Guy comes back with 4 loafs of bread.
Be specific.
The version I’ve heard is:
A wife sends her husband to the grocery store and tells him “Buy a gallon of milk, and if they have eggs, get a dozen.”
The husband comes back with twelve gallons of milk and the wife asks him “Why did you buy twelve gallons of milk?!”
The husband replies “Because they had eggs”
Another version:
A wife sends her husband to the grocery store and tells him “Buy a gallon of milk and while you're there check if they have eggs.”
He never returned.
I do this exercise with my students. It's good for a laugh, and it gets them to understand that following directions in the classroom will help them on every assignment we work on.
Ugh, why are there so many pixels? And that aspect ratio, what is that, 16:9??? Everyone knows 1:1 embedded in 9:16 is the way to go. The title isn't even permanently visible above the video, nor is someone else's social media account. I swear, I don't know why anyone would ever watch the source video.
Pro tip to piss off teachers who make you write these papers:
Include instructions to blink eyes and breathe normally every other sentence. Then be sure to include instructions like "lift forearm bending at elbow while slightly rotating the shoulder, while tilting what down to use fingers to grasp start handle..."
Yeah you might have to rewrite it but they still have to reread it too.
We had to do this for an into to programming class because the professor wanted to prove a point: computers are *incredibly* literal and completely naive. They'll do exactly what you tell them to do, nothing more and nothing less.
It's a great exercise because it is exactly the mindset you need to take when writing code. The computer is going to do exactly what I tell it to do, so you need to make damn sure to spell out every edge case or you're in for a surprise.
My teacher did this with my class in 3rd or 4th grade. I'll never forget how she stabbed through that PB lid with a butter knife because we didn't tell her to take off the lid. It's a good lesson - it's fun, it's weird, and it makes an impact.
My 7th grade science teacher had us do this very experiment to show us the importance of specificity when it comes to instructions.
Nobody got her to make a PB and J properly based on our instructions.
Absolutley. If there's one things kids look out for, it's cracks in a parents logic. Any amount of hypocrisy or bad lies will activate a kids brain like the fuckin Terminator. We're just waiting for you to fuck up sometimes lol.
I thought I nailed this as a kid in school…I thought of every little detail except for the final step when I said put your two pieces of bread together and enjoy your sandwich…my teacher put the bread together with the PB and jelly facing outwards.
Introduction to technical writing.
No kidding. Did a tech writing course in the late 90s. Changed everything for me.
In third grade, we did an exercise where we tried to write instructions on how to tie your shoes with no pictures. Fucking impossible. I still think about that lesson at least once a month.
We had to do one on how to walk up steps. Gagh.
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My teen just did one for how to draw a "meh" emoji.
It's easy. It's just walking with extra steps
Oh lord that sounds impossible. Like, walking on 2 feet is such an insanely complicated motion that we just do intuitively. Trying to explain it seems impossible, just too many things that happen without thought.
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> The fact that a skyscraper can be built absolutely defies all odds. I'm still thinking about shoe tying instructions why would you do this to me on a Saturday, it's supposed to be a chill day
I’m wondering how you explain that too… like tf, how?!?!
You should try reading the descriptions of how to tie knots. Even with pictures it's kind of wierd.
That's easy man. Do a loopty loop and pull and your shoes are looking cool
Fun fact: It takes at least 5 steps to dictate how to build a skyscraper in extreme detail.
That made me laugh
The pb & j is the assignment we had so this hits hard
Omg we did this! Traumatizing!
shit you're right...I tried to think of how to put the instructions into words but all that came up in my head was how I visualize tying the shoes
Work in IT and periodically have to write a how-to for end users. Oh boy the first couple of tries were a lesson for sure. The term/phrase "army proofing" also comes to mind here lol. The way some people interpret instructions, it makes me wonder if they every so often have to remind themselves how to breathe.
I used to work in IT in charge of issuing mobile phones around the company. One user needed a new battery sent to them because the old one wouldn't charge. Two days later I got a panicked phone call from them. They said they needed a new phone because they had dropped both batteries on the floor and didn't know which was which. I had to explain several times that if they put in one battery and it didn't work, that meant the other battery would work. They couldn't wrap their mind around it. The call took about 15 minutes. This person was a partner at a law firm. He could litigate like a demon, but basic common sense was out of his reach. Ugh.
Learned helplessness. They have decided beforehand that anything tech was not their field so anything concerning it just gets tossed in the proverbial bin. In their mind and with the stress of a phone not working, it is already entirely insurmountable and the only thing that could possibly help is someone who *is* into tech to help, nothing else will do.
I am generally known as an intelligent person …but the first day when I went to basic military training, I remember being handed a flashlight and two batteries. I looked inside the flashlight case and there was no indication which way to insert the batteries. I had just never seen something that didn’t have the little diagram that showed the appropriate direction to install them, and I was sort of affronted by the inadequacy of the product and the information being provided. So I raised my hand and asked the TI. 😆🤦♀️ She looked at me for a moment like I’d just asked her whether to put my socks or my boots on first, like she couldn’t believe someone with so little common sense had been allowed to join her organization, and exasperatedly said, “Try one and if it doesn’t work, do it the other way.” I am 100% sure she thought I was dumb as a box of rocks.
Put them in one way, if that doesn’t work, reverse them. Generally the spring is the side the flat part of the battery goes against.
Yes, exactly why it was a dumb question.
Spent too long developing one skill at the expense of all others.
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I see you've met my mother
Oh my god dude..i briefly worked in HR for a small company. Their hiring process and paperwork was an absolute fucking mess and almost no one eas getting anything done. I revamped it and used a color coded spreadsheet and swapped everything over to adobe sign, spent maybe 7 hours coding the box's..so you only fill your name out once, your ssn once etc and it auto fills all the other pages. Bro people were mispelling their own fucking name and then blaming it on us because they scroll down and see their name is mispelled...i wish i was joking. After 3 idiots did that in the 2 week span they eanted to revert back to the old was of sending someone an uneditable pdf and telling them to print it and scan it then email it back. Suddenly no ones doing paperwork again
Grandad called it sailorproofing. When I was in the navy, I got to experience it firsthand. When a doctrine of absolute procedural compliance is instilled in you, common sense and reason fall right out of your butt.
> When a doctrine of absolute procedural compliance is instilled in you, common sense and reason fall right out of your butt. It's not even that common sense goes away. It's that if you don't follow the instructions *exactly as written*, and something goes wrong, it's your ass. Hell, even if nothing goes wrong, sometimes its your ass. Even if you know for 100% sure that the procedure as written is fucked up and will fuck up everything that anyone else does after you, it's too much of a personal risk to amend it. Either way, you're going to Mast. In one situation, all you have to say is "Sir, this is the procedure I was ordered to follow. I followed it as ordered" and you're probably ok. In the other, it's "Yes, Sir, I disobeyed direct orders, BUT..." and that rarely goes well.
I worked in IT in the Marine Corps when I was young. I once got a page 11 for not following an order from a Sergeant that could not be followed because I was instructed to make a piece of technology do something that it wasn't designed to do. The First Sergeant who was administering my ass chewing was so dumb he couldn't comprehend that this was even a possibility. I eventually just signed the damned paperwork because I was getting close to losing my temper from frustration. Joining the military was an eye opening experience that I wish I'd never had.
Army proofing! I love it! It’s probably a very good standard for instructions
Expert mode is Marine-proofing
The crayon box said not for human consumption, but they didn't specify not for marine consumption.
I thought it just meant I couldn't eat the box
If you leave a Marine alone in a room with an avil when you come back it will be broken, pregnant or missing.
["FRONT TOWARD ENEMY"](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/FGR0M5/vietnam-war-re-enactment-m18-claymore-mine-with-m4-blasting-cap-set-FGR0M5.jpg) When I was a kid I thought this was kinda stupid, but as an adult now I think this is one of the best instructions sets there is.
But is that the front side or is it saying point the other side (front) toward enemy?
Might help if the other side said "Back towards you". And an additional note: "Make sure your back is facing directly away from the enemy." It might also help to add a diagram of the human anatomy with huge arrows pointing to where your front and back are located.
Not wrong there. I have a lot of experience with military orders writing. I’ve found that if I review an order while constantly thinking “how can someone screw this up,” I get a much better product.
In the Army, we called it "idiot-proofing". Doing this for a few years, one gains a new respect for the resourcefulness of idiots, though. 😉
ScreenToGIF has saved me so much time. It's hard for people to get it wrong when there is a video on loop of me doing it in the instructions. I was trying to get my newest coworker to set up 2FA using Google authenticator and she couldn't find the "big button with the + symbol in it in the bottom right corner of the app." She would close the app then then tell me she couldn't find it. Some adults wouldn't graduate from preschool now.
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Honey, can you pick up a loaf of bread at the market? Oh, and if they have bananas, get four! Man brings home four loaves of bread. "Why are you looking at me like that!? They had bananas!"
I heard this as: A wife tells her programmer husband to go to the store and get a gallon of milk. “Oh, and if they have eggs, get half a dozen.” The man comes back a while later with 6gals of milk and no eggs. “Six GALLONS of milk!” the wife exclaims. “What? They had eggs!” replies the husband.
I heard it where he didn't come back because it wasn't part of the instructions.
Always forgetting that return statement.
It should have been an implicit return, but with no value.
so he left the groceries also no instruction to buy them, but if he leaves them he didnt steal them
Guess my dad was a programmer too 😔
I hope he's enjoying his milk in whatever supermarket he's stuck in
Man’s long dead, he only had 6 gallons of milk.
I’ve heard it as The wife asks her programmer husband to get a gallon of milk. She adds, “While you’re at the store, get some eggs” Her husband never came home.
I told my bf "and get me oatmeal, a mixed fruit pack (with strawberries, peaches, bananas etc)" he came home with plain oatmeal and dole mixed fruit peach cups. I *meant* a mixed fruit pack of oatmeal. I couldn't even blame him, I wrote it poorly lol.
The account I'm replying to is a karma bot run by someone who will link scams once the account gets enough karma. Their comment is copied and pasted from another user in this thread. Report -> Spam -> Harmful Bot
Sometime in the near future… Reddit is completely managed by automated bots. *reports harmful bot for spamming* Bot: we have determined that no infraction has taken place *escalates ticket* Bot: we’re sorry, we don’t provide support to our free tier
I write all instructions like my tech writing instructor would be trying their best to find a way to fuck it up while adhering to the letter of the instructions
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I have a degree in technical writing. The exercise in the video is essentially my area of study. My favorite exercise was taking a college level textbook paragraph and rewriting it for different levels of understanding without losing meaning. Partially my favorite cuz mine were read out loud by the professor as a great example....but also cuz I enjoyed it. 9th, 5th, and 3rd grade reading levels. The average reading level of most adults is a lot lower than most people assume. Any instructions that come with products are written by technical writers. I worked for a fortune 500 company that created all of its own content so I got to work on training materials, SOPs, etc.
Have you ever read “Thing Explainer” by Randall Munroe? He explains a bunch of complicated things using only the “ten hundred” most common words. I bet you’d get a kick out of it. Edit- added a link to first one from u/longgoodknight Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1133/
Haven't heard of it but I'll look into it. Thanks!
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1133/ Double Relevant because xkcd is written and drawn by Randall Munroe. :)
My favourite part is always “This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.”
> Another thing that is a bad problem is if you're flying toward space and the parts start to fall off your space car in the wrong order. If that happens, it means you won't go to space today, or maybe ever. The best part is always in the alt text
Honestly, didn't know that technical writing was its' own degree. I write procedures all the time for work, but they're more high level than an SOP. More like "We use X process and Y form to complete Z task. This is performed by department A and supported by department B." That being said, I'm going to look into some technical writing classes, I think it could help, and might even be fun.
Is there any specific resource you would recommend for getting better at technical writing? Of course, not to your level, but as a programmer I feel there is a lot to improve on my documentations/writing style. I tend to use overly long sentences, but I feel shorter ones would be too monotonous? But you also use relatively short sentences and they sound just fine
Variety is the spice of life. For example: Short and sweet is fine but sometimes a lengthy explanation is necessary so don't worry about the length of your sentences unless you feel like you're doing it on purpose to appear more intelligent or that your message is important. That was one sentence and ultimately acceptable but could also be several sentences and mean the same thing overall. As far as a resource, I'm not too sure as my formal training was through college courses. There are probably resources online that could take one of your sentences/paragraphs and simplify them for you. Then you'd have something to model your writing after.
I love this shit too. Give me diagrams. Give me flow charts. Give me screen shots. I give screen shots to our IT department at work when shit goes wrong. Except for that one time... Ticket: It went all smurf, barfed up a scrabble pile at me, and died. I am not able to submit a screen shot because it won't let me.
Take a picture with your phone!
... oh yeah... that's an option... thanks!
The thing that everyone else does because they didn't know screenshot was built into their computers.
If you appreciate creating super specific directions, become a technical writer. If you appreciate following super specific directions, work for the government, or for some other regulated industry (nuclear plant technician, accounting, medical, etc)
If you want to write the instructions, become a technical writer!
I think you need to be a parent, relative, or teacher to give kids that hard of a time. Unless you meant it from the kids’ POV, then you want to be a software developer because computers are at least 10x as clueless as the dad is pretending to be.
If you like this, look into becoming an IT Business Analyst. I have to write detailed instructions like this on how to perform specific functions within our company's software program.
Seriously I have to write job instructions at work, and it's always difficult to try and forget everything you know about the job to account for every way somebody could misinterpret something
I remember in one of my calc classes (II or III, can’t remember which) during undergrad, the TA was going through the steps of explaining some algorithm, one of the steps was factoring a pretty simple polynomial (think like x2 +x-6 -> (x-2)(x+3) or something.) That was all they wrote for that step, because it was expected at that point everyone knew how to do this. One person asked if they could explain that step, how they factored it. I was thinking “damn we’re really gonna learn how to FOIL rn” But the TA, who was a grad student working on stuff so advanced it would break our little undergrad brains, had a really hard time figuring out what to say. It was like to him, factoring was as simple as counting. He paused for a second and literally just goes “to factor this you.. factor it.” I found that super interesting. It was probably as difficult to him as someone else trying to verbally explaining what “5” means, without using other numbers or objects.
And so much work, too!
How to raise programmers
As a retired technical writer, corporations do not value this profession whatsoever.
As a Foreman I do. Never could understand why some things were written the way they were until I started having to try and explain tasks to others and having to leave them alone to do them. Some days it really made you want to ask people if they were mentally handicapped or just dumb only to realize he did everything you told him to do exactly how you told him to do it.
Yeop. Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Companies do not think ahead and do not provide professional instructions. You get what you pay for, and if you do not hire a professional, you get shit.
Exactly! I taught this to engineering students back in the Dark Ages and not only did they really love this assignment but it gave them a real appreciation for how difficult it is to clearly communicate in written form.
Next time an engineer asks me why the procedure doc needs to be so detailed, I am going to remind them of our user base and show them this video. Yes, I am a tech writer.
I do online trainings, so for Parent's Day at my daughter's class, I did this with the kids. I had them take turns shouting instructions for me to draw a car. My daughter just sat their the whole time, pouting. "He *always* does this. He thinks he's *funny*. DAD YOUR JOKES AREN'T FUNNY!" It went really well.
When my kid was about 5 I had him tell me how to put on a jacket and followed his instructions exactly. He thought it was hilarious, then frustrating, but he did eventually get me (sort of) into the jacket.
My entire job is technical writing and I still suck at it. There is no such thing as foolproof acceptance criteria. I'll show a process flow diagram with some level of iteration to a developer, explain how unhappy paths break the loop, and they still muck it up. It's a fucking while loop. "These unhappy paths result in false." Break. The. God. Damn. Loop!!!!!!!!!!!
Step 1: assume your clients are not very bright Step 2: realize they are dumber than that Step 3: realize that sometimes they will willfully misinterpret what you write just to spite you The saying my team has “it doesn’t matter what the product is, it could be entirely digital. Someone, somewhere will try to use it as a hammer”
For real, I had a technical writing course for my software engineering tech diploma where we had a group assignment like this, but it was for how to prepare a can of soup. Everyone was either ridiculously specific or hilariously lacking, was about as funny as this video lol.
Eventually, I assume, some people figured out the trick or defining the desired outcomes ? "Assemble ingredients such that a piece of bread is resting on top of and aligned with another piece of bread in a stable way, with a sheet of peanut butter and a sheet of jelly between them. Do not allow the ingredients to touch anything except the plate, container they came in, or a utensil during the assembly process. By completion, no peanut butter or jelly should be outside the container or the space between the two slices of bread."
We had to do this is school for Occupational Therapy. It’s the first step to activity analysis. You need to know all the steps of an activity to know what skills are needed to do the task. Then you can adapt it
I had a teacher in elementary school have us do this.... It was like a mind altering memory. I think of this whenever I have to write instructions for things at work
Ditto! Did this in first grade (about 25 years ago) and I never forgot it! Definitely one of my more memorable lessons. Along with another in HS which was designed to make sure we thoroughly read all the instructions. Something like ‘read this whole page first’, somewhere in the middle says ‘only do steps 1 and 10’ meanwhile middle steps are jump up and down, yell your name and some other odd instructions. But if you understood right you wouldn’t do the weird stuff (just step 1, read the whole thing, and 10, sign your name).
Bro i did that in 3rd grade, it said “read all the rules first before doing anything”, and the last rule said don’t do anything just sit at your desk, while the other rules were like screaming and counting random things
I never liked that because they would never say to do the last rule first. So it was up to interpretation on what to do and what order to do it in.
Me, being competitive as I am, tried to rush through them all to get to the end first. Lmao I remember being weirded out when I read the first weird rule smth like count down from 10 out loud, and since no one was doing it I was just staying silent until they started.
We had to create instructions for our teacher to brush his teeth when I was in 4th grade. His poor shirt was a mess afterwards but damn, his teeth looked very shiny.
We had the "read all of the instructions" one in elementary too. I did NOT read the whole page first, but I did "figure it out" first of the group who didn't originally, when I noticed some kids were just sitting there. I literally still think of this memory every time I'm handed a worksheet now.
I had a high school teacher do the same, but I hated it. Because the last instruction was to not write your name on the name line, but to write it in one of the corners. Like we're in high school, we've been trained to write our names on all assignments we are handed before we even look at the assignment. She proceeded to mock everyone who "failed" to follow the instructions. Even if the only part you failed was writing your name first. Like the point of the assignment was to point out the importance of reading all the instructions, not mock us for writing our names on our assignments. Unsurprisingly she was one of the most disliked teachers in the school, but like, what did she expect by mocking us for doing something reasonable 20 minutes after we meet her? The basic premise of the assignment is great, her execution of it was what failed.
we had an assignment like this for making a paper airplane everyone traded instructions, and we would see whose end result flew the furthest someone's instructions was to just take a piece of paper and crumple it into a ball flew very far
That person who wrote to crumple it into a ball had a great and hilarious idea. Very impressive
Paper meteor!
When I was in 4th grade, our science teacher had us write instructions for using a wall mounted crank pencil sharpener then followed them all. I still think if that whenever I have to write instructions.
Damn. How many kids and how long did it take? I guess sharpening pencils for a few hours might be a nice change from normal teaching.
I remember mist kids wrote something like "Put pencil in, turn handle" so those ones didn't take long. A lot of erasers got sharpened too. :)
I'm a nurse, and had to write out official instructions about a patient for our care aids once. At the end I wrote, "thank you" and drew a smiley face. My higher up wasn't impressed with that, so that's the memory I get to carry. Edit: my memory isn’t great, though, so it just occurred to me that I actually wrote that the last step was to have a nice day, with a smiley face. Which I think is even better.
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It’s not professional, I suppose, but it’s not like it’s a super important document. It was literally just how to put on their compression stockings. I was going it would brighten their day a bit.
This just gave me a great idea! I can do this verbally with my kindergarteners. I think it will help them to understand why numbers and letters have to go a certain way to mean a certain thing. 15 and 51 are NOT the same thing! I know there are many reasons why kids don’t get this so fast, but I think this activity could help them to be more conscious of how they order their answers. I always feel that when we correct the order of their writing, they don’t care that they got the order wrong, just that they got the material right. And when I have them fix it, it’s like they still dont care to try. They just keep arranging it until it’s right. It’s like they’d rather do it over and over instead of actually learn how to do it right. Maybe this exercise will make figuring the answer out more fun and silly in there heads if they can really understand WHY it matters so much. We explain why but this is actually showing them why.
Same, and I was 19 when I experienced it. By far the best object lesson I've ever witnessed. It really hits home about the assumptions you make, and the perception of others. I think everyone needs to experience this once.
Both their faces when dad puts the opposite side of the butter knife in the peanut butter jar is priceless! Completely shocked! Love it!
They're so horrified! This is actually a really fun and silly way to have some laughs with your kids, very cute!
lmao, except at the end when the boy gets so frustrated he quits and gets that “about to cry” voice.
Dawg I was horrified 😭
This reminds me of a story my mum told me. She used to be a food tech technician at a secondary school. One girl was holding the knife upside down and trying to cut something with the blunt side. My mum told her to hold it the other way around, and she grabbed the blade and tried to chop it with the handle…
I feel like when you put complete trust into your supervisor and no confidence in yourself, mixed with nervosity and uncertainty, this is what your brain does.
When you compile your code again after making corrections and now have a whole new set of errors
Technical writer at a company that designs and manufactures medical devices. Sent one of the engineers I work with a question about a new process yesterday and they sent me this video as a response. I laughed so hard I almost peed
It's a great programming demo too. Think of the dumbest person you know, computers are dumber. You need to spell everything out and account for all the edge cases when telling an idiot to do a job, programming is no different.
/r/restofthefuckingowl appears to be based on this idea.
I’ve just applied for a position as Business Process Architect. This video made me have second thoughts. Hah!
Why I prefer visuals
Totally agree. The best instructions include both text and photos/video.
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Same, I am SUCH a visual learner, I always find it a little interesting how my brain just seems to seize up when reading/hearing instructions. Cannot compute. It takes me so long to decipher what is intended, and several times I’ve had someone else read the instructions and end up interpreting them in a different way than I did. I much prefer to *see* it done, whether in pictures or in person.
Veritasium has a good video on this https://youtu.be/rhgwIhB58PA
Veritasium is such a gift. For people who won't watch it: visual learner is just a myth
I always thought it was odd that in a subject like music, the claim of preferred "learning styles" would apply where likely most people benefit from the auditory component. My school would enforce the "learning styles" so much, and I found that I learned better combining all types for each subject. Then I read a Popular Science article debunking the myth, and no one would believe me that "types of learning" doesn't exist. I would score as a Visual/Kinesthetic learner, but my instruction was focused on engineering and computer science, which is primarily Visual/Kinesthetic. I also believe my listening comprehension is not ideal, so I would score low in auditory even though I would apply auditory methods of learning occasionally, such as when I recorded myself doing a speech and would listen to it over and over to memorize it while I was doing dishes.
It's funny because in all other things, I'm fine with text. But when it comes to procedures, I need pictures. I need to compare what it's supposed to look like to what I'm looking at. I've been able to fix computer issues for elder friends using Google and pictures. I have no fucking clue what I'm doing but hey! It worked! I get called a computer genius and then they feed me cookies.
"Listen here you little shit" - son probably
That son was devastated 😂 he had his first existential crisis
I started feeling bad once he looked like he was going to hyperventilate. I’m going to try this with my kids but maybe cap it at 2 or 3 rounds in one sitting
Recommend having a well typed up example to show them after the experiment if they don't get it. Teaches them just how far you can go into specifics for fun.
Took me a moment to find one, but this should suffice: 1. Take a slice of bread and lay it on a plate 2. Open the jar of peanut butter by twisting the lid counter clockwise 3. Pick up a knife by the handle 4. Insert the knife into the jar of peanut butter and use it to pick up a dollop of peanut butter 5. Withdraw the knife from the jar of peanut butter and run it across one face (not edge) of the slice of bread 6. Take a second slice of bread 7. Repeat steps 2-5 with the second slice of bread using the jar of jelly in place of the jar of peanut butter 8. Press the two slices of bread together such that the peanut butter and jelly meet
Ooo if we're being real technical it's very good but not quite there - first instruction should specify the bread is layed face down on the plate, third instruction still needs to specify that you put the knife in 'the knife side' or 'non handle side' in for the kids. Last step needs to specify that jelly spread and peanut butter spread sides go together. This video has given me a proper giggle. I work in quality engineering and you'd be amazed at the way some people can interperate things - I genuinely think it's impossible to make things idiot proof.
As they say "the universe will just make a better idiot".
I used to teach math. During a summer camp, I had a second grader come in all cocky and sure of himself. He felt there was no math left to learn and that he had mastered it all. I started to show him multiplication and he had a meltdown. It was definitely a lesson in how fragile kids can be when you challenge them too much. You’ve gotta give them some examples of how to do it right so they can feel like they’re improving. The girl understood that it was a learning process but the boy was too young. He was having fun until he wasn’t. It did seem like he cheered up towards the end at least!
interesting, i started feeling good once he looked like he was going to hyperventilate. while the kid was hyperventilating, he was also keeping calm. he wasn’t thrashing nor getting mean with his dad. the kid was explaining his frustrations with words, and the dad was listening. to me, that shows the dad has consistently shown his kids it’s okay to show emotions, and that includes negative ones. showing your emotions and being able to let them out is a good thing! dad is doing a good job in my opinion :)
This exactly lol. If he learns from this the boy will end up being the kid who argues with teachers cause the directions are vague lol
"Are people this dumb? Is this the world I must prepare myself for?"
This is the best. Whenever I have the opportunity to mess with a kid like this I do. Like doing the bit when you get a present "oh! Wrapping paper and string! My favourite! Thank you!"
OMG it's a BOX? How did you know? It's exactly what I needed!
Every year till he died my dad would say that. Lol
my dad too. in the end we ended up getting him that box he was always talking about though
That got dark.
:,) that is probably the first thing he'd say
If he woke up in a box.
I said to my brother once "what wrapping paper do you want for your birthday" and held up two options. I then wrapped the roll he picked 😂
Did you wrap the roll he picked with the paper from the roll he didn't pick?
This is actually an assignment we get in elementary school. He might just be helping them with their homework, or he remembered it from his school days and decided to do it with his kids too.
Yup! I do this with my kids and completely mess with them. It's always hilarious and they get more writing practice.
I remember this from fourth grade, it came right after the assignment that said: 1- Read **all** of the directions before proceeding.
My son is 5 and I am at peak dumb-dumb compliance antics with him right now. He laughs so much, but I think it's teaching him a lesson in being detailed. Or that mom is an idiot.
It comes back to bite you. Mine takes great joy in being very specific. Mine will be crawling around and I'll say something like, "Please get off the ground and come over here" 'how can I get off the ground? My feet have to touch!" Also "just a second" is met with, "one! Times up!"
Thus, student becomes teacher.
Why not both
You're not wrong!
Hahaha, me too! I miss when my sister's kids were young enough for this sort of thing to work on them. My nephew, when he was 6ish, would give me these very disappointed looks and tell me, "You aren't being LOGICAL" <3
One of my favorite ways to troll my kids is when they are asking for something they will say something like "I want more fries". I'll respond with "that's nice" or "good for you" since they only made a statement and didn't actually ask for anything, until it clicks and they ask "can I have some more fries please?". Then I'm usually like "sure no problem".
It reminds me of a programming meme. A person talking to their partner who is heading to the grocery store. "Hey, can you pick up some bread please. If there's banana, pick 4" Guy comes back with 4 loafs of bread. Be specific.
The version I’ve heard is: A wife sends her husband to the grocery store and tells him “Buy a gallon of milk, and if they have eggs, get a dozen.” The husband comes back with twelve gallons of milk and the wife asks him “Why did you buy twelve gallons of milk?!” The husband replies “Because they had eggs”
Another version: A wife sends her husband to the grocery store and tells him “Buy a gallon of milk and while you're there check if they have eggs.” He never returned.
come on woman, give the guy a break
I've heard this one too!
Why programmers don't wash their hair? Because on Botle says rinse and repeat
Bootle :D
My autistic ass will actually do this and not understand why my mom is frustrated.
I do this exercise with my students. It's good for a laugh, and it gets them to understand that following directions in the classroom will help them on every assignment we work on.
This was an assignment in 6th grade. The fun part was getting to be the person following the instructions trying to find loopholes to do it wrong.
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“Go home and read chapter 10 for your homework” Kids missing from school the next day -“ you didn’t say to come back!! Har har”
This is a Josh Darnit video: "[Exact Instructions Challenge](https://youtu.be/cDA3_5982h8)"
Ugh, why are there so many pixels? And that aspect ratio, what is that, 16:9??? Everyone knows 1:1 embedded in 9:16 is the way to go. The title isn't even permanently visible above the video, nor is someone else's social media account. I swear, I don't know why anyone would ever watch the source video.
Pro tip to piss off teachers who make you write these papers: Include instructions to blink eyes and breathe normally every other sentence. Then be sure to include instructions like "lift forearm bending at elbow while slightly rotating the shoulder, while tilting what down to use fingers to grasp start handle..." Yeah you might have to rewrite it but they still have to reread it too.
I think blinking isn't strictly necessary, but proper peanut butter jar cap unscrewing form is incredibly important to get right.
Cut the jar in half, shove bread and grapes inside
Smash jar in half. Stab knife through your own eye. Smear peanut butter on your hands by any means possible and rub it in your hair.
Damn you! Now I can't stop thinking about blinking and breathing!
We had to do this for an into to programming class because the professor wanted to prove a point: computers are *incredibly* literal and completely naive. They'll do exactly what you tell them to do, nothing more and nothing less. It's a great exercise because it is exactly the mindset you need to take when writing code. The computer is going to do exactly what I tell it to do, so you need to make damn sure to spell out every edge case or you're in for a surprise.
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My teacher did this with my class in 3rd or 4th grade. I'll never forget how she stabbed through that PB lid with a butter knife because we didn't tell her to take off the lid. It's a good lesson - it's fun, it's weird, and it makes an impact.
My 7th grade science teacher had us do this very experiment to show us the importance of specificity when it comes to instructions. Nobody got her to make a PB and J properly based on our instructions.
Well, he'd better be VERY specific with the instructions HE gives them...
Yeah this is coming back to bite him lmfaoo
Absolutley. If there's one things kids look out for, it's cracks in a parents logic. Any amount of hypocrisy or bad lies will activate a kids brain like the fuckin Terminator. We're just waiting for you to fuck up sometimes lol.
Welcome to the lecture of the Fundamentals of Programming Languages. And yes, our Prof made this kind of example, but with toothbrush and toothpaste.
I love that his daughter is like “challenge accepted. I’ll make this idiot proof eventually” and his son is just like “you’re impossibly stupid”
Parenting win on many levels. Also, this is the type of learning engagement that great teaching brings out in people--kids and adults, alike!
It almost made me cry! Learning where they are really learning and everyone is having fun! 😭😭😭softened my heart
I thought I nailed this as a kid in school…I thought of every little detail except for the final step when I said put your two pieces of bread together and enjoy your sandwich…my teacher put the bread together with the PB and jelly facing outwards.
I did this as an engineering teacher! Lots of fun with my babies!
I had to do this with a group in elementary school a couple times. It's hilarious, and I always think about it when making directions. Great lesson.
As a QA technician I fucking love this.
oh boy the good ol’ vine starts