you say that but Jellyfin has a random button so you can get random episodes from anything in your media library.
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
154 points (99.4% liked)
Showerthoughts
37099 readers
785 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
First, most people aren't going to do that. Second, there's a difference between opting for randomness and having it forced on you.
Now about the idea of the older shows having more self contained episodes; OP is correct. It was the rise of night time soap opera like 'Dallas' and miniseries like "Roots" and 'Sho-Gun' that made networks/producers see that people wanted extended stories.
ErsatzTV let's you do channel surfing with Plex Media. Crate your own channels, make a schedule or randomizer, then flip through to find something to watch
You can use it with Jellyfin too, though live TV support varies by the client you use
hands you an octopuss
They also don't have the experience of only seeing half the episode because you were channel surfing, and not getting to see the rest of it until you catch another rerun two years later.
I remember my sister and I watching the movie A Little Princess on tv multiple times but always missing the beginning. We didn't know the name of the movie until we came across the book.
On the flip side they'll not get to experience knowing that the channel you were watching was the exact same for everyone. It feels really strange and isolating to me to know that what's on my TV right now is streaming just to me.
I know it's silly; we were still watching TV alone, but there was something about knowing that other people were watching the same thing at the same time that made it better.
Now, even when I watch cable, I'm not sure very many people are watching at the same time because a lot of people are DVRing it
I never would have expected to, but I miss channel surfing.
Now I get analysis paralysis flipping through a million thumbnails on various streaming services and I don't see anything I want to commit to, but if I was channel surfing, 20 seconds of a nature documentary might be all it takes for me to settle in and learn more about horseshoe crabs.
You might enjoy blippo plus.
I just heard about it on the Post Games podcast
I don't get it....it's a streaming service that only shows pretaped fake shows, but airs them as if it were live tv?
It's a mildly interactive art piece with an overarching plot if you care to dig, and mindless entertainment if not.
mental illness
Yeah, everything had to be self contained so it could be syndicated. Not so much now.
There was a charm to it, I discovered lots of programs from the randomness, one of which is my all time favourite doctor who (it caught me off guard as I saw what I now know was the third doctor Jon Pertwee being beaten up by Morris dancers). It's the one thing I wish was integrated into streaming services. Just a ramdomiser button and it plays whatever.
Yeah but the older generations probably never even thought of watching a series in reverse order. You start with the last episode spoilers, but you don’t know why any of that is important.
On my Plex server, I have several live streaming channels themed differently with an assortment of similar TV shows mixed together.
Even then, I’m not such a monster as to have them out of order!
What I don’t miss are channels that put on Episode-marathons showing back-to-back episodes of a series. The multi-part episodes either air in the wrong sequence, or they don’t play those part-episodes at all.
Gotta love seeing a 3-part episodes with episode 3/3 to start, 1/3 comes next and 2/3 couldn’t make the cut in a 2+hr episode marithon.
It is really weird to be able to have all my shows in order. Shows like south park doesn't matter as much since most of the episodes aren't multipart, but the cartoon wars and episodes 200 and 201 were pretty awesome to watch back to back weeks live.
I always said Netflix should add a favorite shows category that you could play on shuffle (like Pandora radio)
Well, neither do I. When I was growing up the country only had two channels. The dull BBC-content-that-enriches-minds channel and the everything else channel.
Have you seen streaming services?