You're viewing a single thread.
Who notices that someone is better at mounting tvs? How does one notice this? What is this made up scenario?
Besides watching someone to try to learn, craftsmen can just goon over other's works.
At a job once updating some central lighting control there were some awesome rooms some (probably long retired) electrician had planned and installed. man that shit was so clean. Another time me n another guy were 'mirin this single ¾ conduit bend for 5 minutes.
This isn't exactly 100% relevant to your story, but it is related and an anecdote I enjoy sharing.
I recently moved to a small town and hired an electrician to make some changes to my house. After showing him around the house, we went to look at the fuse box to determine what changes could be made.
As we were looking, he said "I know those fuses are original." When I asked how, he pointed at the labels and said "because that's my father's handwriting."
Kinda cool to have a legacy like that. The electrician did do good work, so far as I can tell, so it was likely earned as well.
"because they're fuses instead of breakers"
Ah yes, that's my fault; my house isn't new, but it's not old enough to use fuses, original or otherwise.
Wholesome
Another similar example would be guys who look at a picture of a server rack and go "Hnnnng, look at that cable management ohmygod how!?"
I've been contemplating sending a business rival a bottle of whiskey for proper capatilization on the word "FastLane" as well as strict adherence to correct PLU usage in the face of absurd custom store-level PLUs, 100% get it.
You should!
Do you have an example of a good and bad PLU, actual if possible?
(I did search engine/LLM it first :) )
More that they're using the official IFPS PLUs instead of using the random numbers that this grocery store decided to use.
Bananas are standardized at PLU 4011, but this store has been using PLU 14 out of convenience to them at the expense of government agencies that need the correct numbers to approve purchases made with state-run welfare programs that restrict their use to specific produce items, like WIC.
Oh that is goofy! And harmful. Thanks
What made the old electrician's work especially clean or notable? Just curious what caught your eye as I'm someone not in that industry
Hmm, i used to have pics. Hard to describe with words. Beyond the beautifully square pipe runs and can punches he had a kinda signature with his sweeps and the rooms he musta done looked like he had made a master plan rather than just making it work. Oh and very little evidence of covered up mistakes (short pieces of conduit) that youd maybe only notice if you were doing demo anyway.
We would wonder who this dude was cuz there were like...a lot of rooms he had a hand in in this building. His clean work trademark was one thing, but we never knew for sure it was one of his until we'd pull the old cabinets to find his other trademark, peurile cartoons about how he really felt about his boss.
Man that's amazing, if you ever do find pics of his cartoons or work and want to comment them, I'd love to see them. It's incredible how we touch past lives like that.
Not the person you're responding to, but an electrician as well. The difference between someone who just showed up to get it running and get paid versus the ones who take time to sinch as close to perfect as possible are night and day. A good installation would have the basics like clean pipe runs, level cans and boxes, minimal mistakes (extended conduits, plugged holes in boxes where someone mismeasured, no missing parts, etc). The perfection guys go beyond by having everything laser level with themselves (pipes, boxes, etc), thoughtful layout to make working on it easier, forethought with layout as far as system expansion and futures, sometimes even sizing pipes and boxes a little bigger to accommodate future additions, and often just the little simple details like aligning screw heads where you can tell that the original installer really took their time and had passion for doing things right. Especially compared to installs where it's a pain to try and do anything and you're basically putting lipstick on a pig, it's always a wonderful treat to work on something where someone really gave a shit.
Now when you say goon…
That didn't involve you learning how someone can hang tvs better than you on Facebook. Having hung a TV or two in my day, I don't know how one can learn to respect another's ability there based on social media
Quick edit: I'm also super annoyed at op to tie it to 'positive masculinity' while describing the quintessential male trait - they like teaching or displaying their abilities. Go grill or work on cars with a group of men and see what happens. It's a fucking trope. This nonsense wholesome schtick is gross.
I don’t know how one can learn to respect another’s ability there based on social media
Well i haven't used Facebook in a long time but i have seen (both through reading accounts on social media and a few guys personally that use Facebook successfully for their side-work. Facebook gets like 2B eyeballs daily (if not our 4)
Edit:
edit: I’m also super annoyed at op to tie it to ‘positive masculinity’ while describing the quintessential male trait - they like teaching or displaying their abilities
But toxic masculinity is definitely not asking others for help. as a tradesperson i can speak to the fear of outting myself to ridicule if i all for help. Not just me either, I've seen whole days of work wasted cuz guys are afraid to ask. I don't of it's all jobs but Construction definitely be that way.
Op reached out even so and got help instead of ridicule and are now partners instead of competitors. Like what's not to like here?
Can't forget the fun flip side too, where some guys who know a lot are unwilling to share, because they (being fuckin cowards) feel it's necessary to protect their job security by being the only one who knows how to do certain things.
Or! The guys who know how to do things - have decided they hate doing some of those things (usually for good reason in my experience) - and therefore pretend they don't know how to do them. I kinda sympathize with this one sometimes.
But yeah, "likes to teach" as the toxic trait? Anyone who thinks that is the toxic version of knowledge sharing is kinda just revealing how little time they've actually spent around men.
Bud, there's a term around men over explaining things because it's such a thing: mansplaining. There's also a real big trope in many relationships about men trying to solve problems instead of saying "wow that sucks". This behavior is so ubiquitous that it's in sitcoms and has been for as long as TV has existed.
The hilarious part about your comment is you're the one over-explaining to me here. I'm super familiar with about every way a man can be characteristically shitty, happen to have witnessed most of it first hand over the years, committed some of the milder stuff before I grew up and learned how to behave, but here you are kindly helping me understand things about men. Interestingly, of all the things I have witnessed, what I don't really see often is "mansplaining". What I do see sometimes is a dude earnestly doing his best to offer help and someone else being totally uncharitable about that, like it's some affront. And never to the dude oddly enough, only in a mocking, condescending way to others behind his back. The reason I see those ugly hidden reactions, incidentally, is because my behavior makes it clear I'm a solid ally of the people making those comments, and they trust me.
So I dunno. Way I see it, there's a catalog of valid complaints about stereotypical dude behavior. But being super critical about sincere (if clumsy) attempts to support or help someone just always strikes me as deliberately nasty, for fun. But you do you.
Don't bother with the TV sitcoms, please. "Bumbling idiot father who fucks up even the most trivial things constantly and is roundly shit on by everyone including his own children" is a core, continuous joke behind so many shows. And fuck it, often it's hilarious, I'm not gonna get bent outta shape about it. Your "see, look how toxic, it's been on TV forever" feels pretty weak.
Bingo. Toxic masculinity in the trades is thinking you know everything and acting like it. And it makes working with those people, especially foremen like that, terrible. No one knows everything, and the best tradesmen I've ever met are the ones that know they don't and will never know everything, but they try to learn something new every day.
I have an electrical business, and hired a buddy that was a union operator for years to help out. I learn something new from that dude every day just from his years of adjacent experience, it's pretty rad.
Lol, I thought it was just me. 😄
Professional handymen, electronics installers, contractors, people who do this kind of thing for a living.
I'm one of those. Anyone else think it looks a tiny bit higher on the right hand side? Lol
Definitely.
I think it's pretty hard to judge by eye, at an angle, in a poor quality picture.
But I'm also not a professional, nor was I answering a question about this particular mount's levelness.
You can either hang it up straight or not.
At least in the US and Canada, where wood frames with drywall are common, you're going to want the screws you use to go into a stud, I suppose.
If the guy's running cable inside the wall to reach the TV, I suppose that that's got potential to go wrong. Like, I guess "mounting" might include stuff other than just the mounting itself.
I used to work in the AV field, and there are methods that ensure the TV ends up the wall exactly where you want it. Hitting the studs with lags is huge, but also predrilling those holes, and laying out your measurements ahead of time make it as clean and precise as possible. Fishing the data wires up and down a stud bay is actually really easy (assuming you're not fighting insulation or a fire block), I can see power going squirrelly if the plug down low isn't a straight shot up the wall and the installer isn't privy to electrical work.
PSA: don't run power extension cords inside a wall cavity! It's a code violation and those cheesy 16awg extension cords from Home Depot will heat up in the wall because they don't dissipate heat properly in confined spaces.
You want to put plywood blocking up, which screws into the stud, and mount to the plywood.
And yes, cable pathway, methods, etc all matter. As well as ensuring the mounting looks straight and level when neither the floor nor the ceiling are level. How the cables are managed behind the TV. Its a lengthy list actually.
Better work with the cabling, perhaps. In this picture you can see that there's a new work box in the drywall so he's running hidden cables. There could be drywall patching or he's really good at making the holes so there doesn't need to be patching.
He could do more types of mounts than this guy is used to.
He could be faster.
Is that you're completely unimaginative so you can't come up with ways someone might be better or do you have so little respect for trades that you think there can't be skill involved?
Why the hostility? I would've asked this question if they hadn't, and I don't consider myself unimaginative or disrespectful. Just uninformed...
Who notices that someone is better at mounting tvs? How does one notice this? What is this made up scenario?
Do you honestly think someone asking, "What is this made up scenario?" is asking their question in good faith?
Before this thread, I thought "mounting a tv" just meant nailing the support into the wall and screwing the tv into the support. I chose to read their comment as being incredulous about a random post on the internet, which is entirely reasonable. It would be easy enough to lash out at random people on the internet but I figured I'd try to be positive on a post about positivity lol
Pros notice tiny details that most people don't even think of.
Maybe they did the job 5 minutes faster or the mount job just looks cleaner than yours.
One example: Check the screws on your electric outlet/light switch faceplates. If the screws are aligned, your electrician gave a shit about their work
Faceplate screws in places I've worked: | | | | |
Faceplate screws in my own house: | / \ X = √
I see it all the time.
Like someone shares a photo their desk and their setup is so slick. Or someone shows off their kitchen. Those are things I like a lot and want to improve. So rather than scroll past, or leave a hater response, I ask questions to pick up what they're dropping. You can try that.
That doesn't address the quality of hanging a TV. The things you mentioned are superficial. Being good at hanging a TV is structural. The only way one would know if another was good or bad at it is if the TV eventually fell off the wall or was loose, which one could not see from a FB post.
It probably has to do with routing cables through the wall more than anything
Just because you don't do something doesn't mean nobody does. Maybe don't assume something is made up just because you're unfamiliar with it.
Why would you hate on that guy.
picture of two guys kneeling in front of a wall
Bullshit feely caption that doesn't make sense to any who understands the words being used
Internet: omg, so wholesome!
DIY groups
Yeah this is a weird one for sure. I hate to be a "nothing ever happens" person but this one didn't happen like the caption says it did.
Presumably somebody that mounts TVs for a living.
You don't post videos of your TV mounting skills on Fb??
"okay, the camera is rolling, now whip out your dong and fuck that TV like it's your mother's sister!"
15 seconds later
"damn, how do you even... in the hdmi... it comes back out of the coax?! could you teach me how to do that?"
and from that day forward, it was a duo of TV mounters
And why would anyone hate on someone for being good at mounting a TV?
You are on lemmy. This things get shared here. Same is true for every other social media.
Advertisement for whatever slrpnk dot net is trying to sell?
I definitely have friends who I know are a lot better at this kind of stuff than I am (mostly because they get less anxious over what happens if they screw up but...). I have never seen a difference once the tv is mounted because... you can't see the fricking mount once the TV is mounted.
I dunno. I also kind of have problems with the underlying premise too. Yes, toxic masculinity is a massive problem and people very much do not realize how few "male role models" there are for kids who aren't bald human traffickers and the people who sniff their chairs. But "Hey dude, I see you are a super masculine strong man with a bubble level" is not the answer.
The answer is to teach kids they don't NEED role models that fit the same gender roles they do (or, more often, their parents think they should). An athlete is an athlete and a smart person is a smart person. Same with being "handy". This is a lesson girls/"girls" were forced to learn long ago and is one boys/"boys" would benefit from. Because then you don't need to say "Well, I like what this person is saying but they have the wrong genitalia and aren't muscular enough".
What you see isn't the issue with proper mounting, its what you don't.
Leveling, positioning for cable pathways/junction box positioning/planning, heights for good viewing, proper blocking for support, so on. And someone who foes this for a living is going to notice.
And slrpnk.net, the Lemmy instance, is about working towards a sustainable future (solarpunk concept), so that's the only thing that instance is selling is a climate friendly future. Well worth checking out some of the great communities on there.
If you need help leveling a tv mount (especially considering they all come with really nice paper templates) then you have no business doing anything professionally. Even one of the shitty pocket bubble levels is more than good enough for visual inspection*. Let alone having a proper one for "real" level.
Cabling is generally a home owner's problem unless you popped two holes in the wall to run some conduit. Which, again, is not visible in a facebook post unless someone just never thought of doing that... which gets back to "you have no business doing anything professionally".
There is no situation where even Super Elite Mega Masculine And Muscular Contractors are going to be impressed by someone's tv mounting game to the point of wanting to learn. Especially on Facebook of all things.
This is engagement farming. Nonsensical engagement farming at that. It is on the same level of an AI generated jesus and a caption about how it is strange that those posts never go viral.
I don't think you understand the leveling process in the context of display mounts if you think a paper template has any relevance.
You use the level to ensure that the drill points are "close to level". You then drill and begin mounting the... mount. At which point you are already at the point of glancing at a bubble level while adjusting a few nuts to get to actually level.
But hey? I guess I don't have enough strong male role models to use a bubble level. I should check facebook.
You clearly need some better role models period if you're spending so much time trying to tear down strangers that are just spreading positivity.
Right, so you don't understand what's being discussed then. Thanks for the confirmation I guess.
There is nothing wrong with paying someone to do this for you and you should not feel ashamed of that. It is not a hard challenge but a big part of "growing up" is knowing when to value your time more than money. What will take you half a day will take someone on a fiver-equivalent twenty minutes.
But tv mounting? As long as you have a stud finder (or know what a stud is), it is more or less idiot proof and is very much NOT something that "craftsmen" are going to really notice. And those that do... at least one person in that conversation should not be doing this for a living.
Which is why this facebook post was 100% engagement farming. Because if you show the wiring behind a circuit panel or some joinery in furniture or something similar? THAT is something that you can really see skill in... if you know to look for it. To everyone else it is nonsense. But then you don't get the feel good of "I should like and share this because it is so heartwarming and I can relate".
And the reason why these accounts post this bullshit is to get those accounts popular enough in the facebook algorithm that they then CAN post some ads and get exposure.
What the giant wall of text tells me is exactly what I understood to be true - you are a layman playing expert.
I can guarantee there are actual experts in display positioning, sizing, mounting requirements, pathway, etc. Yes, they do notice the difference.
You do not, because you don't know what you're talking about, while pretending to be an expert. Please just stop. Hi, I am one of those experts in this field! I don't physically install, hell I don't even do the drawing work anymore, but I can tell you right now you haven't got a clue.
So please, move on. Stop being weird.
Edit: I'll give you a free tip. Mounting to the stud is not what you want to do. What you want to do is straddle studs with 3/4" ply for blocking, which is what you mount to.
Mounting to the stud is not what you want to do. What you want to do is straddle studs with 3/4" ply for blocking, which is what you mount to.
If the builder had the wherewithal to provide blocking, which I'll agree is mandatory for anything bigger than 55" (and a 2x8 or 2x10 spanned between the stud bays is a bit better, it provides more meat for the lags to sink into and most jobsites will have some in a scrap pile). But for 55" and smaller, 5/16" x 2" lags into the 2x4 studs is plenty sufficient. Ply works if you want to use toggle bolts, but you have to notch it into the stud for the drywall to sit flat.
And... where on the facebook picture is that backing piece?
Also, could you do a few curls before you explain it to me? This way I have an ice strong masculine role model to teach me how I can see through drywall in jpegs.
If it was done right, you don't see it without looking for the patching of the drywall in the original picture, you won't in a compressed screenshot.
Though your second sentence finalizes for me that I have no interest in your posts/comments, since you're continuing to just be incredibly wierd, for literally no reason other than being upset that someone clearly knows more than you do. So... Goodbye then.
Yo, you honestly need a role model to teach you when to just politely shut up.
That's another lemmy instance.
Knew that part but figured it was an article based on the link. Apparently just a picture of a facebook post.
So... no idea what that facebook post was trying to sell but I guess this is why all that AI nonsense is spammed endlessly on that site.
They're not trying to sell anything.
This is the internet. Always assume people are selling something.
In this case? MAYBE it is someone advertising their handyman service (doubtful because this is a nonsense premise). More likely? It is the same as all those posts about the fucking aligator or puppy and all the ai generated jesus missing a leg and wearing a military uniform pictures where people say "Why don't these posts ever go viral"? It is nonsense that boomers stare at and share.
Which in and of themselves are "harmless". But when the metrics for those posts get high enough? THAT is when the owner of those bots post ads.
Screenshotting with no citation kind of undermines that so... good? But it is important to understand why content like this exists.
Take off the tinfoil hat and go touch some grass.
You are wildly naive if you view things this way