The Car Light Modifier and the Printer Renter Start Learning AI
Let me tell you a funny story.
Even though it’s a small thing, I think it’s worth writing down. Because it’s so visceral—so direct that it slaps you right in the face and forces you to see what’s actually happening in the AI era.
Here's the deal.
I have a friend named Hao. He sells a product on Taobao. Not a physical item, but an installation tutorial for Codex. It costs just a couple of bucks—the kind of cheap where you literally can't get ripped off.
The day before yesterday, he sent me two screenshots from his seller dashboard.
Just two screens. No order notes, no inquiries, no "Hey, are you there?" Just two purchase records, silent as can be.
But right there in the buyer ID section, their store names were visible.
One was called "Car Light Modification". The other, "Printer Rentals".
I was stunned.
Wait a second, let me add some context.
You might think, it’s just a couple of bucks for a tutorial, basically a random click—what does that prove?
Alright, let me give you another number. A Codex subscription costs around fifty bucks a month.
See? This isn't just "buying it to take a look." This is a decision to actually pull decent money out of their own monthly profits.
Okay, keeping that number in mind, look at those two names again.
I don't know what comes to your mind when you see them. But my first mental image was an auto parts market. The kind of shop where, the moment you walk in, you're hit with the smell of engine oil mixed with rubber. Shelves stacked with projector lenses, ballasts, and angel eyes; wall racks lined with headlight assemblies. A mechanic, still bearing the black grease marks from tightening bolts, sitting behind an old PC with a yellowing monitor bezel on the counter.
He wasn't browsing Taobao to kill time. He was probably trying to build something. For instance, an automatic configurator for custom lighting setups. Punch in the car model and year, and it auto-matches the lens model, wattage, whether it needs a decoder—and bam, the quote is generated.
He does not know what a neural network is. Or a transformer. And he doesn't need to.
He just knows that if he has this thing, his quote drops 10 minutes faster than the shop next door. The customer is standing right at the counter waiting, and sometimes, those 10 minutes are the difference between closing a sale and losing it.
Now look at "Printer Rentals".
This one is even wilder.
Think about what a guy renting out printers does every day. He’s either delivering machines, fixing machines, or wrestling with toner cartridges and ink. He probably holds the contact info of a thousand corporate clients in his hands. Which company's contract expires next month? Whose toner needs replacing? Which machine has completely jammed up and needs swapping out? All of this is either in his head or scribbled in a beaten-up, dog-eared notebook.
Why the hell is he buying a Codex tutorial?
He’s not trying to write poetry or make PowerPoint decks. He probably wants to write a script to auto-track consumable lifespans, send automatic renewal reminders to clients, and generate contract renewal plans. He wants to liberate himself from that torn-up notebook.
Look, this is the most fascinating part of the whole damn thing.
Every day, we watch the news about AI. We see LLM parameters multiplying, read about top-tier conferences publishing endless papers, and hear about another unicorn raising billions in VC money. We have this illusion that this revolution is happening inside bright corporate high-rises, on whiteboards in the meeting rooms of tech communes, or in coffee shops where venture capitalists wave Term Sheets around.
But it really isn't.
The real revolution is happening in Taobao seller dashboards.
It’s happening in transaction logs worth a couple of bucks. It’s happening in quietly deducted monthly subscriptions. It’s happening in the most unglamorous, blue-collar industries that you will never see on a tech blog.
If you want to judge whether a tech revolution is real or fake, shallow or profoundly deep, don't look at the spotlight on center stage. Look at this. Look at whose hands those cheap tutorials are finally ending up in. Look at who is silently paying that monthly subscription.
Does this look like hype?
Yeah. It fucking does.
An auto light modifier and a printer rental guy both running to learn AI programming. You're telling me this isn't a hype bubble? You're telling me they aren't just easy marks? Call it that publicly, and you'll get a flood of comments: "Idiot tax," "Getting fleeced," "Every random is trying to jump on the bandwagon."
But.
Think one layer deeper.
What is going through the mind of that auto light shop owner? Is he thinking, "I'm going to launch an AI startup"? Is he thinking, "I'm going to disrupt the industry"?
Bullshit.
He’s thinking: Can I use this thing to pump out quotes faster, make better setups, and snatch one more deal away from the shop next door?
And the printer rental guy? He’s thinking: Can I use this to manage my 1,000 clients so I get auto-reminded when their contracts are up, before my competitors poach them?
You call that hype?
That is an incredibly cold-blooded survival instinct. It is survival-driven micro-innovation.
This isn’t a bubble blown up by VC cash burns. This is driven by bottom-tier, raw survival competition. These guys aren't tech evangelists or AI purists. They’re just small business owners hustling on their own tiny turf, fighting like hell to live just a little bit better.
They heard about this thing, and heard it might be useful. So they spent a few dollars to buy it and try it out.
Actually, later I realized an even harsher truth. These guys most likely had no idea that just installing Codex isn’t enough. There’s still a monthly subscription fee attached.
When they bought the tutorial, they probably genuinely thought a couple of bucks was all it took.
But take it one step further—what does that mean? It means their survival instinct was so strong that they rushed in before even getting the full picture. They didn't even know if it was a trap or a path, but they caught a whiff of "maybe useful," and they already planted their foot in the door.
You call them suckers?
That is sheer, raw vitality.
They are using whatever means necessary, grabbing the cheapest, most accessible AI tools they can find to solve the hyper-specific pain points within their own tiny commercial kingdoms.
This is the most terrifying kind of market penetration.
It doesn't make noise, it doesn't raise funds, it doesn't hold keynotes. But it is real.
From "Buying a Machine" to "Equipping an Upgrade"
Okay, let's talk about the big picture here.
You ask me whether this is the Industrial Revolution or just AI Hype.
My answer is that it’s more profound than the Industrial Revolution. Because it's doing something the Industrial Revolution never did: inverting power.
Think about the steam engine era.
If you wanted to open a textile mill, you had to buy a steam engine first. That thing weighed dozens of tons. You needed a dedicated factory floor for it, boilermen, and mechanics. That machine was the boss, and you had to serve it. Tech was centralized, and power was distributed from a single top-down shaft. The hundreds of workers in your factory—including you—were all ultimately accessories to that machine.
Buying that machine didn't give you power. It turned you into a part of its system.
Now look at the guy who bought the tutorial.
He bought a tutorial for a few cents.
He isn't buying "part of a system." He is using AI to arm himself into a more powerful, independent system.
The core of "installing Codex" isn't about installing software. It's a blue-collar sole proprietor installing an intellectual upgrade for himself.
Before, he could only rely on his hands and his brain. Now he has something else—a tool that can write code, calculate data, and build spreadsheets for him. One single guy suddenly possesses a fraction of the soft power that only massive corporations used to be able to afford. He doesn't need to hire programmers. He doesn't need to buy an ERP system. His little, grease-stained, toner-covered shop is suddenly digitally armed.
What is this?
This isn’t just technological progress, my friend. This is a transfer of power.
In the past, scale was the moat. Big corporations had the money to buy systems, employ tech teams, and use information asymmetry to crush small mom-and-pop shops.
Now, a car light modifier and a printer renter can spend a couple of dollars and potentially level that playing field—just a little bit.
Even if it’s just a little bit.
That is a revolution.
The Industrial Revolution of the Ordinary Person
So back to the original question. Is this an Industrial Revolution, or AI Hype?
I say, it’s a silent revolution disguised as "hype."
The elites are still sitting around debating the ethical threats of AI, arguing over whether it’s just another bubble. But the grassroots market doesn't care about that bullshit. They are voting with their wallets. Those few bucks, and those monthly subscription fees, are the most authentic, burning-hot ballots cast in our era.
They don't need to know how the tech works under the hood. They only need to know if it can help them make another hundred bucks.
This isn't even an Industrial Revolution anymore. It’s more like a Renaissance.
What did the Renaissance do? It liberated humans from the authority of God and placed humans at the center of the world.
What is the democratization of AI doing today? It is liberating ordinary people from "technological authority" and "capital scale." It allows a guy who fixes car lights and a guy who rents printers to become masters of tech, not just consumers, and not just flesh and bone on an assembly line.
So, yes.
This is the Industrial Revolution.
But not the kind started by Watt and Boulton in grand halls and later written into high school history textbooks. No.
This revolution is being collectively ignited by countless nameless "John Does" fixing lights and renting printers. It happens the moment they spend a couple of dollars on Taobao, sitting in their dingy, grease-and-toner-scented shops, and click "Install".
This is the Industrial Revolution of ordinary people.
It’s a Renaissance that smells like motor oil.
The Fire-Sellers
Finally, back to Hao.
That day, after he showed me the screenshots, he stared at those two orders in his dashboard for a long time.
I asked him, "Aren't you afraid people will call you a scammer? You sell this tutorial for a few bucks, and when they buy it, they realize they still need to shell out for a monthly subscription. What if they turn around and call you a fraud?"
He said, "I'm selling an installation tutorial. For a few bucks. The title says 'Installation Tutorial', the description says 'Installation Tutorial'. I am just clearly explaining how to install the thing. Whether they subscribe after installing it is between them and Codex. That has nothing to do with me. My tutorial is worth exactly what I charge for it, and I know that."
Then I asked him, "So what are you really selling for those few bucks? Just a few installation steps? You can Google that stuff."
He answered it himself.
"No, I'm selling an ember. A spark."
"A thought of 'What if this actually works?' A possibility of 'I can try this too.' The last bit of stubbornness that says, 'Fuck this, I'm not getting left behind by this era.'"
Those most grounded, most stubborn small business owners are taking this spark and using it to light up their own little slice of the world.
Most likely, they will fail. They might fail to install it, realize they can't afford the subscription, or tinker with it for half a day only to find it doesn't help them at all.
But that doesn't matter.
What matters is that they showed up.
They lifted their heads from their own little worlds, took a look outside at what was happening, and made a decision: I need to try this too.
We are lucky.
We are lucky to be pitchfork sellers and observers in the most granular corners of this era.
These silent backend orders are the most authentic, raw footnotes of our time.
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Alright, that's it for today.
Win or lose, life is grand. See you next time!