How to have a baby, debone a chicken, and other life-changing YouTube hacks

Because life's a little easier with the help of the internet

Whether you need clarification on how to pronounce Uranus, external, want tips on prepping for the apocalypse, external or would like to build a bed that ejects you, external every morning, when it comes to 'how to' tips, the internet's got you covered.

But even those who consult the internet for every major life decision would have been surprised when Tia Freeman, 22, unexpectedly gave birth alone, with nothing but the help of YouTube. 

Tia had arrived in Turkey for a layover when she started feeling cramps in her stomach. Though she was in the latter stages of pregnancy, it wasn't until she arrived in her hotel room that she realised this was definitely not food poisoning. Oh no. Tia was was in full-blown labour, in a foreign country, and without the number for an emergency.

She consulted the internet for videos that coached her through a water birth, cutting the umbilical cord with shoelaces, and even what to do with the placenta (wait to deliver it, don't...err...pull it out).

Who ever said millennials were mollycoddled?

The twitterverse went crazy for her story.

Tia’s experience proved that YouTube, once the home of cat videos and music clips, has become something we rely on to show us how to 'do' life. It has spawned online trend that can be seen far beyond YouTube too, whether you're following a make-up tutorial on Instagram, external or watching a food recipe on Facebook, external. 

According to Caleb Kraft, senior editor at popular DIY magazine Make, it comes down to the fact that most people just learn better by watching others: “If you were to try to describe instructions in text it would sound incredibly complicated, but demonstrating something simplifies things. In the early days of YouTube it was kind of just a repository - everybody was putting stuff there without much thought."

Things started changing from 2009. “The genre really took off when individuals started to realise that they could put out regular content and their following would grow”, he says. 

These videos started to gain a million views, and the 'how to' video, as we know it today, was born.

“Now there are easily hundreds of individual 'how to' creators”, Caleb says, many of whom do it as a full-time job. Some of the most popular of these are eccentric inventor Colin Furze with 6.1m followers, external, and software engineer-turned-DIY guru Bob Clagett, aka I Like to Make Stuff,, external with 1.8m followers, external.

Here are five of our favourite ‘how tos’, from the useful to the downright barmy:

Crack open a beer with A4 paper

Difficulty level: Easy

We always thought that an origami swan was the most amazing thing you could do with a piece of paper.

But we were wrong.

Here’s your next big party trick: cracking open a beer with nothing but a regular piece of A4 (You’re welcome).

Simply get yourself some A4 paper and keep folding it in half vertically until you end up with a thick wedge. Fold it once again lengthways into a V shape, and place this V under the cap. Using your thumb for support, apply pressure to the cap, and with a little bit of effort, you’ll see the top pop off.

Other YouTubers, external have also successfully tried out this method, though they say it needs a bit of practice.

You’ll never look at a piece of paper in the same way again.

How to debone a chicken

Difficulty level: Medium

Hungry for some classic deboned chicken, aka a chicken ballotine, external?

Before you cook up the treat, though, there is one obstacle you’ll have to overcome - deboning your chicken.

If the thought makes you queasy, here's some online support for you:

Using a filleting knife, start by cutting off the wing tips. You then cut away the legs, before slicing down from the thigh along the drumstick to expose the bone. Cut the bone out using shallow cuts to keep your control. You then move on to the wing and cut from behind the joint to under the breasts to remove the meat. 

Gulp.

Other videos, external recommend different ways of popping out the bones, but none are for the faint-hearted – it takes some experience to be quite so practical when handling a chicken.

Still, who needs a butcher when you’ve got…. the internet?

Impress friends with your DIY 3D hologram

Difficulty level: Medium

You may think that 3D holograms are the stuff of science museums.

But the internet can bring these into your living room using nothing more than a CD case (still got one?), a smart phone, and the contents of your primary school pencil case.

Prepare yourself for some GCSE-level arts and crafts.

Draw a trapezoid onto an acrylic CD case with the following measurements: a bottom length of 6cm, top length of 1cm, and side lengths of 3.5cm. Repeat four times.

Cut along these lines with a glass cutter and then tape the four pieces together along the 3.5cm sides. You then lay it on your smartphone screen with the pyramid upside down on the centre. Play any ‘pyramid hologram’ video found on YouTube, and you’ll have yourself your very own hologram.

Make, external zine even successfully tried it out with a Tupac hologram. We’re not sure how we feel about the inevitable robot apocalypse, but this is one bit of science that we’re definitely here for. 

How to have a baby

Difficulty level: VERY, VERY HARD

People are sharing more than their dirty laundry online these days, with many couples opting to share their births with the online world.

Expect anything.

Nurse Dani from Intermountain Healthcare advises that a woman should carry with her a pack of cards and some snacks, as the wait during labour can be lengthy:

There are also some detailed (read: slightly gross) breakdowns of how to cut the cord, external in pregnancy. But if you’re someone that doesn’t want to leave anything to the imagination, you may appreciate the fly-on-the-wall videos, external also available online. 

While it worked out well for Tia Freeman, this is not, we repeat not, something we would recommend trying at home. A sentiment echoed by Dr. Shazia Malik, a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at the Portland Hospital, London: "Giving birth is a natural, beautiful process that the human body is designed to do," she says.

"But in labour, things can go wrong very suddenly and very drastically to the point that they are life-threatening to mother and/or her baby, and that's why it's so important to have experienced support. To do it without any medical support or assistance at all is not a sensible idea in my opinion." 

How to build a house

When you think of ‘building’ and 'how to' videos, your mind is probably stretching as far as flat-pack furniture. Well, if you feel like it, you can learn how to build a whole entire house online. Solo.

A YouTuber, know as ‘The Crazy Framer’, kisses goodbye to builders and plasterers and helps you build from the framing stage, external...

...through to the roof, external.

As well as these solo attempts, there are videos detailing the other stages of building a house: how to build the concrete base, external of a house, how to install a new window, external, and even how to do your electrics, external and plumbing, external. 

For Chris Carr, a builder and member of the Federation of Master Builders, this is a bad idea. “Building a house alone is a worry, I’ve got to be honest,” he says. “I’m a competent house builder of 35 years, and there are some jobs I can’t do myself. I have to have registered people to do it, like registered electricians and engineers. It's legally binding, and I think you’d have a big problem trying to sell the house after.”

He is also concerned about the experience of those uploading videos. “If it was a self-build ‘expert' I would still be worried,” he explains. "Anybody can put a hard hat and high vis jacket on and say they are a competent builder."

Believe it or not, though, some have successfully achieved this, like US mother-of-four Cara Brookins, external, who built a five-bedroom home herself by following YouTube videos. Major props to Cara, but we’re exhausted just thinking about it.

Yup, from beers to birth, the internet 'how to' phenomenon is there for you every step of the way.