Author Spotlight
Sophie Lindberg
We’ve all seen those “life-changing” hack videos, and I’m pretty sure nobody actually believes that they will work every time they come across them on their Instagram explore page. I’ve fallen down the Instagram explore page spiral before, and I get sucked into these bizarre DIY videos. I’ve always wanted to know if these weird concepts actually work or if they’re just clickbait, so I made a list of some of the oddest, most testable “hacks” I could find and determined whether or not they work, if they’re practical and if they’re worth it.
Clean your Shoes
First, I tried a hack that’s supposed to remove marks from shoes using one of two methods — with nail polish remover or a mixture of vegetable oil and lemon juice. The nail polish remover proved to clean up more than just nails, removing some of the skid marks off of my white boots. The latter, on the other hand, was not as impressive. It works about how you’d expect it to — I was just smearing oil all over my shoe. While they both did work to a certain extent, the results were no better than what I’ve achieved with water in the past.
DIY Blacklight
Next up was a DIY blacklight — this one flat out did not work. The video instructed me to coat two layers of scotch tape in an ambiguous blue marker, then place them over the flashlight on my phone. Then do another layer of tape, but this one colored red. I tried several different kinds of markers — washable, oil based, professional — but there’s no way this could magically make the light from your phone turn into UV rays.
High-Detail Phone Camera
Hopeful not all phone camera hacks were hoaxes, I pursued a DIY that would allegedly magnify my phone’s camera to see small, close-up details. This was one of the few that worked, but it took several tries of attempting to dab the right amount of water onto my phone’s camera lens. The water-to-lens ratio had to be exact, since too much or too little water made everything look blurry. But, after much trial and error, I got a clear photo of the notecard I was writing on, including the little details of the paper.
Drying Nails Faster
After that, I tried using cold water to dry my freshly-painted nails faster. I can say with some certainty that it works. I only tried it on one nail with two types of nail polish — fast-drying and normal. It worked for both, but it’s not worth smudging your manicure with fast-drying polish. For normal nail polish, it could help in some situations where you aren’t in a huge rush. The cold water sped up the normal nail polish process to two minutes — which isn’t as quick as the hack made it seem like. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth the risk, but it does help to some extent.
Sticker Removal
The next one I tried was removing a sticker from a surface using a hairdryer, and shockingly, it worked. You’re supposed to put the air on low and hot, and — like most DIY videos — it didn’t give instructions for how long to dry it, but I waited about 15-30 seconds. I tried to remove a large Iron Man sticker off a plastic cup I stole from my sister’s room. Not only did the technique remove the sticker, but also some of the print that was on the cup — however, the cup is several years old and has seen many washes. The sticker came off smoothly, and strangely enough, there was not trace of sticky residue on both the cup or the sticker.
Sweater Pill Removal
I tried to remove pills from your sweater with one of the hacks, but it was an easy no from me. I tried two methods — shaving them off with a razor or combing them out with a comb — but neither worked, making the sweater look even worse. I’m not sure if it depends on the type of sweater or not because, once again, the instructions were very vague. But, neither of these routes worked for me and both appeared to pull at the sweater’s material, leaving it a little frayed.
Split Ends
Another hack using a razor was shaving off my split ends. This was a bit scary to do because it definitely shaved off my hair, but I have no idea if it looked better before or after I did it. I also tried two techniques for this — one of which was just shaving in a downward motion on strands of my hair, and the other was twisting strands of my hair and shaving in both an upwards and downwards motion. Lets just say that both of these techniques took a little more than my spilt ends off. I’ll stick with the hair stylist for now.
Toothpaste Pimple Treatment
A common theme among these hack videos is using toothpaste as a cure for anything, and this hack adds to the list. The video suggested that I dot toothpaste on an area affected with acne. I knew this wasn’t going to work going into it, but I just wanted to bring to light how bad that is for your skin. As stated by VeryWell Health, the toothpaste can cause irritation, dryness, chemical burns and doesn’t even kill acne-causing bacteria. This is unsafe and not at all endorsed by me. That being said, I did put toothpaste on a recently arisen pimple for two minutes — as directed by the video — and absolutely nothing happened. Shocker.
Overall, I think that most of the hacks you find in these videos are either bending the truth, have no truth or are just flat-out dumb. After watching hours upon hours of 5 Minute Crafts and Blossom, I’m not so sure I would place my trust in them again. Sorry, 5 Minute Crafts.
Leave a Reply