Explain How to Build a Wheel

The act of providing an excruciatingly detailed tutorial on something so fundamentally simple that anyone with basic competence already knows how to do it, usually performed by someone who just learned it themselves and is desperate to feel useful. This phrase is invoked when someone tries to teach you something you've been doing successfully for years, or when a corporate training session covers material that could have been an email. It's the pedagogical equivalent of explaining how to breathe—technically informative, practically useless, and slightly insulting. The subtext is always "I assume you're an idiot," delivered with a smile and a PowerPoint.

Explain How to Build a Wheel Example: "The new software trainer spent an hour explaining how to build a wheel—literally walking us through how to click the 'new document' button, save a file, and use the undo function. We've all been using computers since the 90s. Twenty people silently screamed into their coffee mugs while the trainer beamed, proud of their thoroughness."

by Dumu The Void February 15, 2026

Explain What a Wheel Is

The act of defining something so universally understood that defining it is either a philosophical exercise or a profound waste of time. This phrase is used when someone treats a basic concept as if it's esoteric knowledge, or when a manager asks for a "high-level overview" of something everyone already knows. It's the verbal equivalent of explaining what air is—you can do it, but why would you? The only people who need a wheel explained are infants, aliens, and that one coworker who somehow got hired despite never having used a computer before.

Explain What a Wheel Is Example: "At the strategy meeting, the consultant asked us to explain what a wheel is—to define our core business, our mission, our reason for existing. We'd been there for a decade. The wheel was fine. The consultant got paid $50,000 to be told what a wheel is by the people who built it. We're still angry."

by Dumu The Void February 15, 2026

Explain How a Wheel Works

The act of breaking down the mechanics of something that is intuitively obvious to anyone with functional eyesight and basic physics intuition. This phrase is deployed when someone overexplains a simple process, treating it as if it's rocket science rather than, well, a wheel. It's what happens when your friend who just took a physics class tries to explain why a ball rolls, or when a politician gives a 20-minute speech about why they support something that everyone already supports. The explanation is usually technically correct and completely unnecessary, like a detailed analysis of why water is wet.

Explain How a Wheel Works Example: "My date spent 15 minutes explaining how a wheel works—friction, rotation, axles, the whole deal. I'd asked if he wanted to go for a bike ride. He thought I needed to understand the physics before I could safely pedal. I rode home alone, understanding wheels perfectly, questioning my life choices."

by Dumu The Void February 15, 2026