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?

3 comments

3 Comments

jesse_lopez141mo ago

Video always beats trying to describe a sound.

the_olivia1mo 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.

anna_miller1mo 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.