this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
390 points (96.7% liked)
Showerthoughts
38758 readers
1103 users here now
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
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- 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
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
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.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Sorry man you are probably the only one in a billion native Chinese speakers that make those connections directly, please don't make it sound like your personal shower thought apply to everyone else.
Normal native Chinese speakers learned immediately that characters used in every single country names are, as defined by "transliterate", purely based on pronunciation, and have absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of the characters.
So native speakers are trained to, and very good at, completely ignore the meaning of separate characters in transliterate words.
I personally have never ever think of American as "beautiful", or France as "lawful" since childhood. Thinking South Korea as "cold" just because "韓" sounds like "寒" is definitely the most hilariously ridiculous connection that I have every heard in my entire life.
I have also never heard of any native Chinese speaker playing these mental gymnastics for country name, or any transliterate word. Never ever read a single sentence that put Mexico and dark skinned people together, or any of those ridiculous examples. Not in real life, not on TV, not in the books, or on the vast Internet.
Note that there IS some strong propaganda going on when government choose the characters of official transliterate country names. Also there are lots of researches around this subject about how these characters affect people's impression of various things.
It's just that in real life, the effect of these country name propaganda on people's impression, is just miniscule and purely subconscious. So in my entire life I have never seen anyone, any material, that speak those impression out loud, so directly, exactly as government wanted, like this shower thought did.
Either OP is a truly unique one in a billion snowflake, or this whole thing is yet another AI generated hallucinating horse shit. That Mexico impression is so, so hilarious that I start to admire the creativity in this post.
Regardless, it's too late now. This misinformation has already reached maybe thousands of people, and they are all curious about what their country's characters mean in Chinese. They will never see my comment, and continue to live with this ridiculous impression of general Chinese speakers, for the rest of their life.
Bro, not everything is AI, I'm just an introvert that think about things alot.
And it's not like I seriously think that Japan magically hides the sun inside their island because if the 日 character, its a subconcious impression because my brian automatically make that connection, so its like I just make jokes to my dad like "is it really warn in Japan"
Its kinda like "Iceland", like: "hey I bet there's a lot of ice on that island"
If I were still in China, and like someone were to ask me about my impressions of a country, and I don't have any info, I'd just say that I've never been there and never heard of anything about it, not actually say outloud the subconcious feeling about the name of the country.
Also, kid-me think really weirdly.
Also how the fuck is it misinformation?
If I said: "Native English speakers probably think Iceland has a lot of Ice" or "Native English speakers probably think Greenland has a lot of grass", is that really "misinformation"
Jesus fucking christ, why is every lemming so fucking hostile for no fucking reason.
We're not all hostile, but that one sure is acting like you pissed in his cereal.