Overheard a kid in my chair say he gets his fade tutorials from TikTok and it hit me how much the trade has changed since I learned on a real head in 1985

Back then you had to mess up a paying customer to learn what not to do, now the new guys can watch 20 videos before they even touch a pair of clippers, which makes me wonder how many of them are actually picking up the bad habits nobody corrects on screen?

3 comments

3 Comments

sean484d ago

Watched my nephew try to fade his own hair with a YouTube tutorial and his line was a mess, went all crooked halfway through. I had to fix it for him and told him the problem was he was copying the motion without understanding why you tilt the clippers a certain way. What worked for me back in the day was messing up on a few friends in high school, where they'd tell me straight up when I jacked it up. You can watch all the videos you want but until you feel the weight of the clippers and the resistance of the hair, you're just guessing. The bad habits from online are real though, seen guys on Instagram using too much guard overlap and leaving ridges that look terrible.

taylor.brooke4d ago

Ha yeah book learnin ain't the same as feelin it go wrong.

ward.diana4d ago

Sure, but I gotta push back a little on that "feeling it go wrong" thing. I mean, if you watch a detailed tutorial from a pro barber who explains the angle and the tension slowly, you can pick up the "feeling" without ever cutting a real head. My cousin learned to do skin fades just by studying online videos for two weeks, bought a cheap mannequin head, and his first real haircut was cleaner than anything I did in my first year. The problem isn't online learning itself, it's people skipping the basics and just trying to copy a flashy move without understanding the mechanics behind it.