this post was submitted on 17 May 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:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. 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
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. 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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Its rhe only thing I wish could change about my experience using Lemmy, for more active users in the communities like NFL or NHL and the affiliated team pages of those sports. I haven't had any social media in decades, my main source for sporting news breaks up until 1-2 years ago was Reddit.

I love the small community that makes up Lemmy. As someone just posted, it feels like a small town community. I like the absence of corporate shills and ads and bots.

Back when I switched from Reddit to Lemmmy, I made an effort to upvote and comment on the NFL and Buffalo Bills communities. I eventually gave up because it was like months of posting, voting and commenting but when I would go back to check the communities, everything would still be sitting at like 2 up votes and 0 comment replies or if it was my own post, 1 upvote and 0 comments. For a majority of cases. Every once in a blue moon I would come accross a post where another user voted or commented but it was never more than me and one other user.

I know there is a certain demographic that uses Lemmy that is mostly driven by the required IT prowess needed to set up, use and even understand the federated concept. I also recognize that this demographic is traditionally disinterested in sports. Im not complaining about this or the users who are on Lemmy. Im also not wishing for any changes be made to aggressively expand Lemmy's user base. Its just an impractical wish I have so I could get my sports news from the same source I get all my other news.

I will prolly spend more time this coming year settling on a 2ndary source for sports news from sources similar to sleeper app but it would be so nice if the Lemmy sporting communities blew up so I could keep everything aggregated to one source.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As a sports fan (NHL, NFL, NBA, ATP) I feel lucky to have a bunch of sports fan coworkers. We talk sports and joke around at work all day.

I do wish the sports communities on lemmy were more active. It seems like lemmy’s left-wing community does not have very many sports fans.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Leftists usually love sports for supporting other cultures but hate commercial teams and sponsorhips. Enes Kanter was banned from NBA for talking about human rights as example.

Also most sports fans on lemmy are into computers too since it takes some messing around to setup so that might be why those communities are always big.

I am heavily into Atli Cirit and archery, martial arts look fun to watch too. But why would I search for those communities when I know there is a huge programming community that I can simply join.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (2 children)

It’s just been my experience that a lot of athletes and a lot of sports fans tend to be more right wing and that a lot of leftists don’t like sports at all, even when there are no pro teams involved (pickup leagues etc).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

and that a lot of leftists don’t like sports at all

Is that your experience per se, or have most of the leftists you've seen been nerds, and you're just noticing the much more well-documented trend of nerds disliking sport?

Personally I happen to be the kind of nerd who loves sport. My favourites are triathlon (and its constituent sports) and HEMA, but I also like professional spectator sports cricket and rugby league.

HEMA's a bit of an odd one since it tends to attract nerds more than people who are fans of more traditional sports. When I skip training to watch a big game of league, I definitely get light-hearted but at least somewhat sincere "sportsball" comments from regulars who like doing HEMA but aren't interested in other "normal" sports. But my other sporting interests are far more conventional. This, while being a software engineer by trade, and also having more nerdy hobbies like D&D (actually, even nerdier: I play Pathfinder these days), real-time strategy games, and...well, being on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

also having more nerdy hobbies like D&D (actually, even nerdier: I play Pathfinder these days

pffffffffffffffft, those aren't even nerdy. Those are like bringing kraft cheddar to a fancy cheese party and saying you're a connoisseur. Let me know when you want to break out the real nerd braggadocio and start in on the fan-made white wolf spinoffs, or the burning wheel good times.

;)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

fan-made white wolf spinoffs

Damn. I did buy a copy of V5 back before the pandemic because someone was going to start up a game that I was pretty excited to be in. Unfortunately that went by the wayside and I've so far never gotten to play any World of Darkness games.

The nichest RPG I've played was probably "End of the World", where the premise is you play as yourself, arriving at your regular RPG night, and just as you get started, the apocalypse starts. Awesome premise. Fucking terrible mechanics. Do not recommend that system.

Actually, that's not quite true. I did once play a home-made system someone else at my table created. But it wasn't particularly inspired in my opinion, and didn't do anything very interesting you couldn't do with a little tweaking of PbtA.

d20 fantasy is my main thing that I keep returning to, but I've had plenty of other RPG experience ;)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Alright, I give you the nerd credit. I'm just depressed because I found out there was a group starting a game in my theater troupe, but they'd capped it at 5 and I was too late. I'd even take D&D right now.

The end of the world sounds fun. I'd bet it would be a blast to throw that wrench in 'session zero' of a fate game (which is my personal favorite, even the prometheus and werewolf games don't match up).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

The end of the world sounds fun

Yeah the premise of it really is. Our starting inventories were literally whatever we brought with us, plus whatever happens to be in the host's house. The conceit we went with was that the person who's gonna be GM is just "running late" when the apocalypse starts. It was just let down by some disappointing character stat generation methods and mechanics that weren't very good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I did qualify my entire comment with:

It’s just been my experience that…

So yes. And most of the nerds I’ve met lean right, not left. The leftists I’ve met tended to study the Arts (English, sociology, history, etc) whereas the right wing types all studied math, engineering, computer science.

I do know a pair of right-leaning philosophy students though they claim to feel like outliers in a program that’s an outlier (the other way) at a school that’s mostly STEM programs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The leftists I’ve met tended to study the Arts (English, sociology, history, etc) whereas the right wing types all studied math, engineering, computer science

Sure, maybe. I'll point out that there's a known statistical trend of more highly-educated people being more left-leaning, but I'll leave that discussion there, because it's not actually the point.

I didn't actually say anything about nerds being leftists. I said that nerds are anti-sport. And that Lemmy is made up of nerds. Both of which, I hope, are not controversial statements. Not that Lemmy is made up of a representative cross-sample of nerds, but that of the users who are on Lemmy, most are nerds. My conjecture is that the reason you see a dislike for sport on Lemmy is not because Lemmings are left-wing, but because they're nerds. And that if you were to control for political belief, Lemmy would still have a stronger anti-sport bias than the general public. While if you controlled for "nerdiness", Lemmy's anti-sport bias would be relatively weaker. Not an easy experiment to perform in practice, unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I think even if you exclude all nerds, you’ll find that sports fans lean right. Nerds, left or right, tend to be anti-sport, though that’s basically by definition (a nerd being a person whose hobbies skew intellectual rather than physical).

That’s not the only way to define a nerd however. Another definition I’ve heard is based on the level of obsessiveness a person has with their hobby. In that world I would consider most of the biggest sports fans to be nerds. Think about how much time they spend looking at stats, talking about strategies, trades, drafts, listening to radio and podcasts, etc. All of that is very much in common with how video game nerds engage with their interest.

I consider myself a nerd who loves both sports and video games (RPGs, Roguelikes, fighting games, RTS). However unlike many sports fans and athletes, I’m not religious or superstitious. I think that latter group correlates with being right-wing (perhaps even more so than education).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Personally I have no love for sports but my partner does we are both quite far left so I don't think that really has anything to do with it.