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Showerthought: I spent 3 hours trying to find the right way to ask a question about my car's weird noise.
I kept typing and deleting posts in a car forum, trying to describe a rattle that only happens above 55 mph, but I couldn't get the words right. It finally clicked that I needed to just post a short video with the sound, and someone had the answer in 10 minutes. Has anyone else wasted a ton of time overthinking how to ask something simple?
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jesse_lopez146mo ago
Video always beats trying to describe a sound.
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the_olivia6mo ago
Watched my buddy do this exact thing with his truck last month. He spent an entire evening typing up this huge essay about a whining noise, and @jesse_lopez14 is totally right, video is the only way. He finally just propped his phone on the dash for a thirty second clip. Some guy in the comments immediately said it was the power steering pump, and he was right. All that time wasted trying to be poetic about a stupid sound.
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anna_miller6mo ago
Trying to be poetic about a stupid sound" is my entire life story. I once wrote a whole paragraph trying to describe a squeak in my dryer. It was just a sock stuck in there.
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colegarcia4mo ago
Start by recording the noise with your phone and posting it. @anna_miller is right that trying to be "poetic" about a sound is a waste. I did the same thing with my brake squeal and spent an hour on a novel about frequency and temperature, then a buddy took a video and a guy on a forum said "worn pads" instantly. Video cuts through all the guesswork and gives people something real to work with. Just keep it short and let the audio do the talking.
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