A wise man (or woman) once said: “All of life’s problems can be solved with two things — duct tape and WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn’t, you need duct tape. And if it doesn’t move and it should, you need WD-40.”
If this quote speaks to you on any level, you may already be a fan of There, I Fixed It, a blog that harnesses photographic evidence of ingenious do-it-yourselfers gone wild.
It’s a site worth visiting at this time of year as you hunt down the perfect present for that weekend warrior on your gift list. After perusing photos of, say, a car engine’s air intake hose replaced by a Pringles can, or a water pipe repaired with a dog chew toy and a C-clamp, you might opt to get your DIY-er a nice, safe fruitcake instead of a new set of tools.
There, I Fixed It is part of the ever-growing Cheezburger Network, a collection of sites beloved by Web surfers who adore a) zany humor, b) zany photos and c) photo-caption-writing contests. The network includes I Can Has Cheezburger? (funny cat photos), I Has a Hotdog (funny dog photos) and FAIL Blog (funny photos of, well, complete and utter failures).
At the helm of the network is Ben Huh, a 33-year-old Seattle resident who knows how to tap into the general mood of the Internet at any given moment in time. He said There, I Fixed It works because it touches people’s everyday lives.
“People think to themselves, ‘I thought about doing that, but I didn’t actually do it,’ ” Huh said. “It’s actually kind of genius, but in a horrific way.”
Brilliant — and dangerousAll of the photos that run on the site (and on other Cheezburger sites) are submitted by users. They get screened by living, breathing employees who make sure they’re appropriate for online publication, and then the community of users takes over. Users vote for their favorite images and determine which ones appear on the home page.
Huh has a staff of about 50 people overseeing more than 40 sites, which, combined, get 16.5 million unique visitors a month. His growing company relies on Web advertising, and it also makes money from sales of books, T-shirts and other merchandise.
FAIL Blog is the Cheezburger Network’s most popular site, and next up is I Can Has Cheezburger. There, I Fixed It is another biggie for the company; Huh said it gets millions of page views each month.
He said the fix-it photos that come pouring in each day never cease to fascinate.
“Some of the simple ones are kind of genius, but kind of dangerous,” Huh said. “This one person had wired an LCD TV on top of their showerhead. It’s kind of ingenious in that it’s not going to get wet — but do you really need to watch TV that badly?”
‘A literal fix’
Other images raise questions about the very nature of construction and home improvement.
“Once it starts to be years since you’ve left something that way, that’s when it gets to be very interesting,” Huh observed. “Using bags of concrete as a temporary staircase is OK for like a week, but when it rains and it actually turns into concrete, then it becomes more of a moral gray area. Do you just leave it like that? I mean, technically, they are concrete porch steps.”
Huh, a self-described “minimalist,” lives in a condo and isn’t a big fix-it guy — although he did once repair a broken couch leg by himself. (“I Super-Glued the hell out of it,” he explained.) But even though he’s not consumed by plumbing and landscaping projects on a regular basis, he said he can’t help but admire people who seek — and find — “a literal fix.”
“Basically, there’s a need, so do it directly,” Huh said, describing the overarching theme of the photos on There, I Fixed It.
For There, I Fixed It fans who want to get their hands on something a bit more tangible, they’ll soon be able to do just that: A “There, I Fixed It” book will be published in April.
“I’m really, really hoping they sell it at Home Depot,” Huh said.
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