this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
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- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
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I think entertainment is one of the poorest means of distribution, because, as it is now and in my opinion, entertainment exists in a state somewhere between not being taken seriously, and being taken seriously enough to pacify the subconscious.
On the other hand, populist means of distribution would be far more effective for this. Appeal to the average citizenry, make the message clear and simple, easily digestible in terms of complexity not wording, but frame it still within the context of reality.
As a concrete example, I'd offer stuff like House Of Cards, The Fall of The House of Usher, The Boys, and many, many other shows with a "calling out truths through metaphors" theme. All of these shows are on point as far as having the metaphors parallel life, but even so they are heavily misinterpreted at worst (see people being downright surprised that Homelander is supposed to be the bad guy), or consumed then forgotten at best.
We need to go beyond metaphors and tackle the Concrete, the what-is, as-is. Show the numbers, show concrete examples of how life is made worse by actual people, and call it out directly - as opposed to the luke-warm and abstract wording of news, that dilution of the truth to make it inoffensive enough as to be easily swallowed then excreted by readers, as the truth isn't the point of news anymore, it's getting more and more eyes on your webpage.
Edit: and it needs to be short. We don't want to keep people entertained on the couch, we want to deliver the blow, then let them fester alone and in silence, sitting with the truth in their lap.
Edit 2: maybe this'd offer a clearer example of what I mean. We (Romania) recently had our Presidentials and narrowly avoided electing a Fascist (George Simion). The reason why his campaign was that successful (and the reason why Trump's was as well, for that matter) was that he kept it simple. They had billboards posted across all major cities with his party name, his face, and a message saying "apartments for €30.000" (in the context of a one bedroom, ~50m² apartment now costing upwards of €100k in many larger cities). It was utter bullshit, as anyone who knows how basic economy works has said from the start and as Simion himself admitted on live television, but the message was clear and impactful enough to settle into people's minds.