This fits right into that whole world of internet hacks that only work when someone edits the video. My sister tried the one where you rub a banana peel on a cut and it heals faster, and surprise, it did nothing either. What gets me is how these videos always have the same setup, weird close up shots, jump cuts, and some caption about how doctors hate this trick. Real tests like yours take a couple days and nobody films that part. Same thing happened with those fake cleaning videos where a guy wipes a burnt pan and it looks brand new, turns out most of them swap pans off camera. Your control slice with plain water was smart, that is the part people skip. Keep testing and posting the fails, since those are way more useful than the viral wins.

Muting is basically a suggestion on TikTok, not a rule.

Six hours of staring at a bus schedule sounds like torture honestly. I get why you did it though. But I see it differently. If the whole scene hinges on the car being gone, then the bus ride or the walk should matter to the story somewhere. Like maybe she meets someone on the bus who changes her mind about something. If you just swap it to a DVD and mail it back, you lose whatever that travel time was doing for the plot or her headspace. The one word fix is clean, but it also erases a chance to make the story richer. Sometimes the detour is the point.