Instructional videos on YouTube are often quite, well, instructional. In the good ones, someone who knows what they’re doing patiently and step-by-step walks you through a process that you would never, ever, ever in the whole wide world have figured out for yourself. I’m not exactly Ms. DIY, but I’ve looked to YouTube experts to show me how to do stuff like bait that new-fangled mousetrap and how to fold a fitted sheet. (Note on folding a fitted sheet: you’d have to put an awful lot of practice on this one to make perfect, and it’s just not worth it to me. So I’ve still got the lumpy, weird fold thing going.)
But the GE YouTube that demonstrates how to reset your lightbulb is in a league of its own.
We’re not talking about a plain old screw-it-in bulb. Or even one of the newer pin sets.
No, what apparently needs resetting is a General Electric C smart, Bluetooth-enabled bulb that lets you do all sorts of nifty smart things like schedule or voice activate it.
There are, of course, any number of relatively straightforward ways to turn a lightbulb off and on.
You can do it the old-fashioned way and flip the switch, press the button, or pull the chain.
If you’re too lazy for that, or you want the lamp lit when you walk in the door in winter, you can put it on a timer. The bulb will brighten right up at the appointed hour.Or you can get yourself a Clapper. You remember the Clapper, a product right up there with the Snuggie, the Ginsu knife, and SNL’s Bass-o-Matic. All you need to do to get it to work for you is clap on, clap off.
Which is a lot easier than the rigmarole you need to subject yourself to in order to troubleshoot your GE smart bulb so that you’ll have it at your beck and call.
First, according to the narrator, turn off the lightbulb for five seconds.
Then turn it on for eight seconds.
Then turn it off for two seconds.
On for eight more seconds. Off for two more seconds. On for eight seconds. Off for two seconds. On for eight seconds. Off for two seconds. On for eight seconds. (Gasp!) Off for two more seconds.
Now turn it on, and it should work.
If not, maybe you missed a second or two somewhere. It’s unclear how much of an effect that would have, but GE does recommend counting using the “Mississippi” method — one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi and so on. (Source: WaPo)
99.9999% of the time, I’ll go with the written word over the video, but in this case, the written word does not do this process justice. You really do need to see for yourself. (Wish I knew how to embed a video in my blogging app. Maybe there’s a YouTube instructional video for that…)
And once you’ve seen for yourself, spend a few minutes grazing through the comments. Some of them are priceless. Here’s an especially good one:
“This video made me forget about my soulless existence and feel alive for 8 seconds, then dead for 2 seconds, then alive for 8 seconds, then dead for 2 seconds…”
Others wondered whether the tutorial was a parody. Compared it to their sex lives. Or were tempted to buy the lightbulb “to see whether these instructions are real.”
Oh, they’re real alright.
Asked whether the video was intended to be comical, Mary Ann Milo, a spokeswoman for GE Lighting, said only that the company created it to help consumers reset the C by GE bulbs.
“We are aware that the current reset process for our smart bulbs is not ideal. We are working on simpler methods to reset products. We appreciate our consumers’ patience in the meantime,” Milo said in a statement Thursday to The Washington Post.
I’m not someone who believes that, if God had wanted us to have smart light bulbs, he would have had Thomas Alva Edison invent them for us.
Smart technology is not going away, and it’s not all overkill (smart fridge alerting you to buy OJ) or just plain useless.
Some of it’s really and truly smart. Not that I’ve bothered to program mine yet, but programmable thermostats, yay!
And even smart lightbulbs will have their day.
Some twenty years ago, I went to a Microsoft partners conference out in Seattle. Bill Gates gave the keynote and spoke about smart tech, and how one day, lightbulbs would be smart enough to tell us when they needed to be changed. Or something like that.
And smart building technology is really great, making buildings more energy efficient and all that good sort of stuff.
But for us mere civilians, it’s not all that onerous to turn on the lights. Or to figure out when a bulb’s out. It doesn’t turn on. And, once you unscrew it, a quick shake will tell you if it’s a goner.
Anyway, the GE video is really worth a look.
Truly, no amount of expected value would be worth going through a factory reset of your lightbulb.
I’ve seen some pretty awful product design in my life. And I must confess that I have written a few step-by-step tutorials in the pre-video era that helped walk hapless customers through use of poorly designed software. But this GE video is really a doozy.
GE used to say “we bring good things to life.”
With this video, they’re bringing awareness to a bad product design, and an unintentionally hilarious video to life.
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I was considering a post on this, when an email from my brother-in-law Rick convinced me to Pink Slip it.
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