this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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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
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.
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I think it's not just possible, but easy, because entertainment cannot grant some true, genuine escape in the first place, so we understand mere distraction by it, of varying degree. Actually escaping the society would mean taking some real action, like packing your stuff (if that) and leaving for the woods or some other remote location where it's you and the wilderness. Sitting in an building likely surrounded by other buildings, most likely connected to the sprawling electrical grid to power the actually hi-tech devices required to enjoy the entertainment that is very likely streamed to you in real time, produced in an actually hi-tech environment by other members of society, all dressed in some industry-produced PJs or something, enjoying something ultra-processed or even delivered to you after a couple of clicks over virtual buttons on your pocket super-computer that you swap for a new one at most every few years - that is pretty far from escaping society.
But you can take your mind off of it for a while.
For example, if I'm tired of all the AI and wars and right-wing aging people taking power, but play something like No Man's Sky, flying around in space and digging some stuff and building my ships and as of recently decorating my space stations, I occupy my mind and let it cling to something else, often managing to mute the thoughts filling me with dread, even for a couple dozen minutes.
Something less peaceful surprisingly can serve purpose, too, by similarly hijacking my attention and though process and causing my nervous system to respond to different things: like watching Mad Max: Fury Road, which is pretty far from anything calm or soothing, especially when you take its lore into account, but watching it, I can almost guarantee I'll be glued to the screen, following the action, feeling all sorts of things for the characters, thinking things of them and their actions, and actually feeling good by the end of it, almost cathartic because I've been emotionally shaken and stirred similarly to an amusement ride.
And surprisingly still, anything that is filled with hope and faith in humanity almost always makes me feel worse, because it actually reminds me more of the issues that are being ignored or mismanaged or even exacerbated. I remember reading Project Hail Mary and feeling heartbroken and desperate over some of the events that seemed so unrealistic and far from the reality already seen during the 2020s disasters, because I just knew that the kind of response depicted would be too big of an ask.