Photo credit: amazon.com
Lifehack videos.
Most people have seen them and laughed at the unlikeliness of the hacks or their purpose, but for some reason, they’re everywhere. The structure of these “videos” is short, sped up clips arranged in compilations. These videos are normally on Facebook and YouTube.
The most popular company for this is 5 Minute Crafts. On YouTube, they have 64.9 million subscribers and on Facebook, they have 61 million likes.
Looking at one of the videos on their Youtube, 23 Must-Remember Ideas For Emergency Situations, the first thing that draws you in is the thumbnail, which is a woman pressing an elevator button with her finger, then an image next to it with her finger covered with a condom pressing the button. This “hack” is never shown in the video.
But then, what is in the video?
Now don’t get me wrong, there are some hacks that make sense, but they’re such low hanging fruit that it’s most likely common knowledge such as if the underwire in your bra has slipped out, push it back in the hole and then seal the hole. Or if there’s a fire, crawl under the smoke to get out.
But those low hanging “hacks” aren’t what I wanted to share. This channel comes up with the strangest and most inconvenient things. One example in the video was, “Did you fall and get a black eye?” Rub a hard-boiled egg on it “until the bruise disappears”, and all your problems will go away.
The video didn’t say how long it would take, or why it even works, 5 Minute Crafts just presented it as fact and moved on like it never happened.
Do you have a ton of money to waste and hate deodorant? According to 5 Minute Crafts, you can put pads in your shirt to soak up your sweat. Are your feet cold? 5 Minute Crafts says don’t put on socks (or multiple pairs if it’s super toasty). What you need to do is spend a bunch of time and hot glue to make these wacky, cardboard slippers that look extremely uncomfortable to wear.
All the videos on their channel are like this. 12-20ish minutes of weird and pointless “life hacks” uploaded 3-5 times a day. Channels like these are called “content farms” and literally exist to make money. They value money and quantity over quality or usefulness. When you see videos from a channel like this, think about what you’re seeing and remember to question what’s on the screen. If something seems off, always take some time to do some research and remember to question everything.