The online tutorial drinking game
First, I’m not advocating drinking games here. They’re silly and hazardous to your health. What a juvenile activity—sipping booze every time you hear a certain phrase in a movie or TV show!
Still, I can understand why they exist, aside from being an excuse to drink. A repeated word or phrase can become so distracting it totally eclipses the main event. I remember a college professor who loved the word particularly. He liked the sound of it so much he slowly articulated all five syllables, savoring it on his tongue as if it were fine chocolate.
Obviously, drinking was not allowed in the classroom. So during his lectures, we began to record one hash-mark every time he said particularly. After class, we compared numbers—I think the record was 32. He was so pleased to see us hanging on his every word and writing in our notebooks that he never realized we had zero idea what he was talking about.
Drinking games exist to make fun of overused words, phrases, or actions that draw attention from the real subject. And that brings me to the subject of online tutorials.
There’s nothing wrong with the idea of online tutorials. They show us how to do things, for example with software, that we could never figure out for ourselves. At least not from the icons on the screen or from the unreadable, or non-existent, documentation. And anyone, it seems, can make an online tutorial.
Just be aware that if you create a tutorial with a perky narrator who sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks on speed, your audience might want to slow things down with a drinking game. And if you just want to play a drinking game with someone else’s tutorial, I suggest listening for these overused phrases:
simply
We get it. This is easy. You want us to be confident. “So you simply set up the preferences, then simply create a profile, then simply make a few small adjustments, and simply send it to your mailing list. Now we’re going to simply find the solution to the Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom in arbitrary electric and magnetic fields.” Saying simply doesn’t make it simple.
go ahead and
As if you think we’re poised over our keyboards, afraid to touch them for fear of electrocution. “Go ahead and enter your password, then go ahead and log in, then go ahead and click Next. Now we’re going to go ahead and start, then we’ll go ahead and click on the arrow.” This is not bungee jumping off the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
you guys
“So OK you guys, here’s a cool way you guys can make a newsletter. Just insert whatever branding you guys use, with the color scheme of [my favorite] you guys’s logo.” I won’t even get into the issue of gender references. Just leave off the guys.
Disclaimer: This drinking game will not make the tutorial any clearer. If necessary, the audience can simply just go ahead and run the tutorial again. They still might not understand it, but you guys won’t care … and neither will they.
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