Scootering magazine

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˃˃ In the fast-paced world of technology and social media, Scootering editor Dan Clare is positively snail-like… but now even he has embraced the opportunities.

Ihave to admit, I’ve no idea what my kids find so fascinating about these ‘social media’ platforms. I quite like Facebook for keeping in touch, etc., but when it comes to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchap and now the latest child zombifying demon… TikTok, I’m lost!

My mother spent hours trying to get me back in the house as a lad. I’d be raking about all over the place on my pushbike, often begging for an extra hour down the woods, or at the park or BMX track with my pals. Now, I seem to spend hours trying to get my kids OUT of the house! All I seem to get from them is an occasional teenage grunt from behind a screen which has been stuck to their face for the past 24 hours!

Inevitably though, during lockdown, I myself spent a little more time stuck to a screen than I should have… I tried a few of these ‘Zoom’ meetings to get together with friends, but it wasn’t for me.

One thing that did strike a chord though, is YouTube. I’ve spend endless hours on there, and the bit I love is learning new skills! I even watched a tutorial on how to fix my dishwasher, top brownie points with the missus (she was just pleased; I’m not referring to her as ‘the dishwasher’). In the end, I decided that half these YouTube experts were people just like me, blokes who ‘knew a bit’ about a specific topic, and they just talked about it into a mobile phone camera… so I had a crack, and well, blow me down… now I’m a YouTuber!

I told my kids, half-believing ‘dad was now cool’, but I was just met with cringing distain. Thankfully though, these ungrateful sprogs are not my core audience… scooterists are, and they love it! Thousands of views, and hundreds of comments in only a couple of weeks.

It’s a great way for me to help out fellow scooterists, and also put forward great offers from the magazine... win-win. So if you need any help calculating the compression ratio of your Vespa, selecting the right gearbox for your Lambretta, or even jetting your Dellorto PHBH carb, be sure to look up ‘The Scooter Factory’ on YouTube. It’s kids play; it must be if I can do it!