this post was submitted on 10 Dec 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:

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enshittification is inherent to our culture and the only thing that prevented it in the past was slow communication. (lazysoci.al)
submitted 1 day ago by presoak@lazysoci.al to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

People making things worse isn't a natural state.

To give an example off the top of my head, the US House of Representatives used to be even worse. An interpretation of the Constitution's quorum clause became traditional in that if a rep would not answer "present" when called to a vote they were counted as not in attendance. Essentially, a minority faction gave themselves a veto on the whole body. This persisted for decades until one speaker just said "I can see you there", and the body got slightly better.

(That it was latter became bad all over again in new and clever ways is a slightly different issue.)

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The house of representatives is arguably a technology (or something like that. A shared machine?). Technologies are a special case. We've got big groups of people actively striving to improve them.

The casual, half-neglected "everything else" is the norm. Tragedy of the commons and progressively intensified exploitation of that commons is the norm.

Unless it is specifically protected and fostered it gets chewed to bits. The only thing that really protects it is keeping it out of reach (through lack of communication, transportation or whatever)

[–] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think it's often useful to react to contrary evidence as special case exceptions.

The "tragedy of the commons" is a real thing, but it's also literally what "the cathedral and the bazar" is about. I would argue that the awareness and intentional action made based on either side of this mode is why technology seems to behave differently from other areas of human society.

Generalizing from the specific, I think it's more helpful to say "things tend to change randomly over time, and people can be resistant to sudden change which is not obviously better."

Since random change is more likely to be a change for the worse than a change for the better, societies will have a tendency to slowly become worse as time goes on. But the worse something gets the easier it is for people to discard it, and since intentional changes for the better are so often deliberate they also are often improvements to the best of what came before.

Enshittification occurs more as a deliberate act to increase revenue or decrease cost, which is a whole different ball game.

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

But we're always trying to increase revenue and decrease cost. That's biological. It's a constant.

So enshittification and change for the worse look alike. So maybe conflate them

So the only thing free from this constant worsening is that which we give special attention to improving. (Ex : technology)

(It's a strong argument for personal discipline. Chaos is the norm. Insanity is the norm. Rot is the norm. Etc)

[–] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago

But we're always trying to increase revenue and decrease cost. That's biological. It's a constant.

You may have this habit, but it's hardly universal to our species. My biology tells me to value the stability of home life and the predictability of patterns; any increase in revenue or reduction in costs is from learned habits or intentional action.

I completely agree about personal discipline being a good bulwark against accidental change for the worse, though.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's because our economic system requires constant increases to profit margin.

Once a company gets to market saturation there's only three ways to do that:

  1. Make product shittier

  2. Make product more expensive

  3. Mergers

We can just not use the ridiculous economic system we're currently using tho, it's easily fixable.

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I guess things could be better if we avoided saturation.

Through death, disaster, expanding population or new frontiers

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Market saturation...

The theory of natural limits states: "Every product or service has a natural consumption level. We just don't know what it is until we launch it, distribute it, and promote it for a generation's time (20 years or more) after which further investment to expand the universe beyond normal limits can be a futile exercise." —Thomas G. Osenton, economist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_saturation

Corps want more people, not less. Because people are potential customers, or cheap labor. Even if neither, their existence as extra unneeded labor reduces the price of labor.

You seem to have been talking about "population saturation" which I get the meaning of but I'm not sure it's a thing.

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Well I figured if you create more people then you create more customers. And with new frontiers comes new opportunities to dump product into taming that frontier (thus more sales of product). And if people die then the birthrate fills the hole and delivers new customers. And disasters function much like new frontiers.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

Well, yeah, we didn't evolve to occupy a place, we kept getting wiped and having to start over. While something like a Greenland shark goes 50 years before it can reproduce.

We evolved as prey, but we don't have any predators left. So there's nothing to control our population.

But that's way off topic

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 1 points 23 hours ago

3 is just 2 with extra steps.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Enshittification is only inherent to capitalism because there is a monetary incentive to steer in that direction.

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Despite capitalism, companies used to diversify or improve their products when they were no longer selling. Now they're forcing people to buy them anyway by bribing politicians and either being in cahoots with or buying up competitors.

[–] falseWhite@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Greed is exponential. The more they have the more they want. It has about reached its peak, these billionaires have so much they want to rule the world, at any cost.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

You can only grow so much doing things good that eventually you need to start doing bad in order to have higher profits than the previous year. Early stage capitalism looks pretty good; late stage capitalism is pure shit.

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 0 points 1 day ago

I think that farmers have been wiping out forests since forever.

[–] Cobrachicken@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

One of the causes for social media algorithms: insta-rage now possible.

[–] pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I'd recommend reading Enshittification by Cory Doctorow if you're interested in the subject. He argues that there are some specific causes. To name a few:

  • The US has been lax on enforcing antitrust laws, meaning there are fewer and larger companies, and less competition forcing them to not be shitty
  • The power of these large companies has also allowed regulatory capture
  • Technology has allowed them to do a lot more shitty things and obfuscate bad practices. This includes being able to communicate faster as well as other things.
[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Sounds like Cory is pointing fingers. Has any society ever curtailed our hunger for more? Harnessed that of the underclass. Gave free rein to that of the overclass. Yes. But never inhibited.

[–] drkt@scribe.disroot.org 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

People are downvoting this because they don't want to acknowledge that they live in a selfish shit culture that values and rewards hoarding wealth above all else, the precursor condition to enshittification of services. You might not personally, downvoting person, but don't be blind to the world around you. It will only get worse until you acknowledge it.

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think the hoarding urge might be genetic. An expression of chronic anxiety.

This is where psychedelics and meditation come in.