{"id":4552,"date":"2023-12-16T05:08:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-16T05:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4552"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:44","slug":"thanks-youtube-mechanic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4552","title":{"rendered":"THANKS, YOUTUBE MECHANIC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tonight I am thankful for YouTube and all the YouTubers who take the time to film themselves fixing things.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am not sure <i><b>why <\/b><\/i>they do it. I am just glad they do.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This week, Sarah faced her first mechanical challenge since taking ownership of the little VW Beetle convertible. She drove home from showchoir practice after school with neither headlight working.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since she leaves for school in the dark and returns in the dark, the headlight issue made the Beetle undriveable.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I know very little about car maintenance but I do know that the chances of both headlights burning out at the same time is pretty darn small.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I looked it up on YouTube and found several videos on how to fix this particular problem on a 2006 Beetle. The most competent videographer filmed his solution a year ago and 10,000 people have watched it since it premiered.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It turns out the problem isn&#8217;t too difficult to correct &#8211; the repair cost me nothing but time &#8211; but I wouldn&#8217;t have known how to diagnose the problem without YouTube&#8217;s lead, much less how to remedy it.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/IMG_20231216_000143-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1600\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/IMG_20231216_000121-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1600\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/IMG_20231216_000134-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1600\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s interesting to me &#8211; the internet has fragmented our society in one sense. There was more cultural cohesion when families sat down in the evening with only three choices for entertainment: ABC, CBS, or NBC. (PBS didn&#8217;t count, although it did have <i>The Lawrence Welk Show<\/i> on Saturday nights.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But even as it has fragmented the population, the internet has brought together individuals within those fragments &#8211; like owners of 2006 VW Beetles whose headlights have suddenly died &#8211; and helped them solve each others problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Strange dynamics for a culture!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight I am thankful for YouTube and all the YouTubers who take the time to film themselves fixing things. I am not sure why they do it. I am just glad they do.\u00a0 This week, Sarah faced her first mechanical challenge since taking ownership of the little VW Beetle convertible. She drove home from showchoir [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4556,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4552\/revisions\/4556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}