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.
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.
Since she leaves for school in the dark and returns in the dark, the headlight issue made the Beetle undriveable.
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.
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.
It turns out the problem isn't too difficult to correct - the repair cost me nothing but time - but I wouldn't have known how to diagnose the problem without YouTube's lead, much less how to remedy it.
It's interesting to me - 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't count, although it did have The Lawrence Welk Show on Saturday nights.)
But even as it has fragmented the population, the internet has brought together individuals within those fragments - like owners of 2006 VW Beetles whose headlights have suddenly died - and helped them solve each others problems.
Strange dynamics for a culture!
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