Ann Reardon (How To Cook That) not only does cooking videos, she also debunks Instagram, TikTok, etc. “life hack” and fake craft videos.
She recently uploaded a video about the dangers of “fractal burning”.
(Disassemble a microwave, hook the transformer to some nails, plug it in and apply the nails to wet wood. What could possibly go wrong?)
Dozens dead, many more badly injured yet YouTube took down her video for “spreading dangerous information” yet leaves the burning videos up.
To her credit, she reposted the warning portion in her latest video and risking her channel.
Quote: “Your life is more important than my channel.”
I’m guessing both her video and the videos encouraging this “fractal burning” hack are against YouTube’s guidelines. But her video (and channel) is more popular and therefore gets priority attention from the content review team at YouTube. Meanwhile the many individual videos encouraging dangerous behavior slip through the cracks.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence”
I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for that one. The way YouTube flags and judges videos is opaque, but I’d still bet that it’s incompetence and not a deliberate distinction.
I know people who used fractal burning successfully, and I may do that sometime in the future myself. I haven’t seen the offending videos for homemade power supplies, but any such instruction for this process should include a large clear warnings of the danger involved, and the relatively simple ways to avoid any danger.
I have seen numerous videos on YouTube that would allow stupid people to electrocute themselves with transformers taken from microwave ovens but I haven’t heard of it happening all that often. It’s possible the videos about this technique are attracting a different type of person who doesn’t realize the potential danger involved.
WTF? I saw her original video a few days ago. I’ve been following her for the last year and a half or so, and she does an excellent job of exposing all the bullshit that propogates Youtube and TikTok. Some of the people killed with fractal burning were electricians themselves, and people who should known better. BigClive also has a good video about the dangers of this:
Every microwave I’ve ever owned or used have been covered in warning labels, especially on the back where you have to take it apart. If you’re taking apart a microwave to try and repurpose the parts, you very much deserve whatever bad thing happens to you.
The links are to the warnings provided by Ann Reardon. I’m not criticizing those at all. I don’t know what particular videos she’s warning about but she probably has been screwed over by YouTube.
Sorry, if I’m missing something else you’re trying to tell me.
“All that often” is, of course, relative. Right now, there’s 34 accounted for dying from fractal wood burning in the US, and another 30 in the UK, and who knows how undercounted that is, and what has happened elsewhere (no numbers for Australia, for instance.) A lot of the deaths involved some rather unfortunate coincidences/bad luck by people who thought they were being relatively safe. No thanks. Not worth it for some mildly interesting wood burning patterns.
I am talking of the numerous other videos about the use of microwave transformers for non-fractal burning purposes. If those videos are killing people I haven’t seen anything about it, but it’s possible they are a problem too.
But the point I want to make is that most of those videos are addressed at people who are interested specifically in high voltage, high current circuitry itself, with prior knowledge and experience, not people interested in a tool they don’t understand to further a completely different and unrelated interest.
I was just saying, if you are thinking about doing fractal burning it can’t help to watch the video since about 4 minutes in it explains how and why fractal burning is so dangerous that you shouldn’t do it.
That doesn’t mean much. A typical electrician isn’t versed in the operation of flyback transformers.
I know exactly why it can be dangerous. If you have bare wires hanging out and need to touch any of the electrical circuitry or the board then you are an idiot and could kill yourself. If that’s the way microwave ovens were made the kitchens and break rooms of America would be knee deep in corpses (assuming people dumb enough to use such a microwave oven probably wouldn’t deduce the connection to the dead bodies).
We don’t hear about much anymore but it wasn’t all that long ago people were electrocuting themselves by poking around inside a TV set. The transformers in the old CRT electronics would charge up capacitors to lethal voltages. It’s easy to be safe with those if you know how to discharge the capacitors with a flash and a loud bang instead of you looking like a flashing X-ray of yourself before you hit the floor. Before that people were sticking forks in toasters and replacing fuses with pennies. Technology can and will kill the unaware.
YouTube could be responsible and require warnings on any videos of this nature, that is probably the best that could be done. I hope they do but it seems unlikely there will be any more than the token effort they put into reviewing videos for other reasons.
