this post was submitted on 14 Jan 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
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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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It’s unfamiliar, that’s all.
Normally, you don’t hear what your voice really sounds like. You hear a distorted version because your mouth and your ears are connected to the same body. When you get used to the distorted version, you begin to consider it normal. When you hear the real one for the first time, it sounds unfamiliar.
Exactly, everyone feels like they sound weird. Except me, I do just sound weird.
I wonder if your brain then starts to align how you hear your own voice and how you hear it when it's recorded. If it starts to sound more the same for you.
Would also be really weird if you for a long period only heard recordings of you speaking, and when you start speak again, you get equally, or probably more, freaked out by your own voice, as when your hear it recorded.
Yeah, the reverse would be super freaky. However, arranging circumstances like that would be very hard. Like, how do you prevent yourself from hearing your own speech for an extended period of time? Either way, that would be quite an experience once you switch back to normal and you can hear yourself normally again.
I think it would be an unusual occurrence, but not really "hard". Imagine a YouTuber who edits their own videos. If they live alone and spend an extended period of time editing their backlog, they might not talk at all and only hear recordings.
But that would have to go on for an extended period of time to work. You don’t forget your own voice in a week.
People who make videos and podcasts may wear headphones, but often they leave one ear open for reference. If you cover both ears, you end up talking so loudly that you can hear yourself, which isn’t really helping with the audio quality.
In order to fully isolate yourself from your own voice, you would have to always wear ANC headphones while talking. I guess that could be doable when making videos and podcasts. Another option is to isolate yourself from the world so you don’t even need to talk to anyone.
I'm talking about editing a backlog, like if you record hours upon hours of content, then spend weeks editing them. Think of those hour-long video essays with animations and stuff. If you live alone and stocked up on groceries, you could easily go quite a while without actually having to leave the house.
Again, a pretty specific scenario, but not exactly hard. Not even that farfetched for some niche video essay creator.
That's it. I've watched my own videos dozens of times by now and it's not weird anymore. But I distinctly remember that feeling OP's talking about frim the first few video's I had to watch.
How long did it take to get used to hearing your real voice?
Im not sure. A while, maybe up to half a year, doing one or two videos per week. But I tried not to rewatch every video, because it was so awkward. Sometimes I have to though and at some point, in that first half year, it stopped being awkward.
Would we still find it weird if we didn't know that is our own voice that is being played? Like if somebody plays a recording of me from last week where I said something general that everybody could have said?
I did try this, and I can still tell. I sent someone a voice message, then told them to re-send it to me at a random time. Could still tell it was me.
I did, however, get around it while voice training? I'd spent a week speaking in a different voice to my usual, then when I recorded something in my usual voice it didn't give the effect you usually get when listening to your own voice. I did get it when listening to a recording done with the trained voice, though.
Probably not. My guess is that you would consider that voice just as unfamiliar as the voice of some Rando you’ve never met before.