this post was submitted on 26 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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Like if someone wishes to disclose pronouns, or relationship status, mental health disorder, age, or disability, these should be options where a person may choose to display them all the time, only to others when interacting, or only if others choose to look at some background profile.

For instance, I don't want to see a tag reminding me that this place is my only external human contact, but it might be good to have an asterisk pop up with my name for others to see if I choose and they care to look at what is disclosed. Like a "." At the end of a name for disclosed info, or an apostrophe for preference, or a colon for both. Something like that.

Years ago I started calling out broke neck disabled guy passing when I do my physical therapy routine on the bike trail. I dislike being invasive, and the psychology of having to say I'm disabled, but my safety and overall bike trail etiquette of others changed drastically to the point it is my normal. Regulars on the trail have even become quite friendly and supportive making my only time out of the house and life in a bed more pleasant.

Yes, such a disclosure makes me more vulnerable in a place like here, but it potentially focuses a lens on people that should be weeded out. Admin, and to a much lesser extent mods, have the responsibility to act as the social feedback mechanism normally played by social peer pressures in person to hold strangers accountable to social norms.

My actual shower thought, was a combination of how all robots in Asimov's universe have R- prefaced to their name, against my experience on the bike, and how others here like to add their pronouns. It should be an internet cultural standard to add disclosed nuance as standard without stigma as part of what it means to be human and real. It might even be a good way to weed out more simple bots, AI, and people with agendas.

Anyways, maybe a crazy idea. It conflicts with my ideals on privacy but the benefit to cost seems maybe viable. My thoughts are often abstractions that encompass far more complexity when I try to explain what seems simple to me on the surface... or maybe I'm just dumb; not for me to say I guess.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Way back when, Slashdot had something like this to place in your signature. It was a code string that looked like a PGP/GPG signature but the letters were actually personal details.

I recall you could encode age, gender, and relationship status in it, and I think location and whether you worked in the tech industry

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Is this specific to Lemmy, or literally the billions of websites that have registrations/accounts etc..

I'm so confused by what you're trying to say here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It should be everywhere. Sorry I'm very abstracted in thought and that can be challenging for some types of people to understand. I still appreciate you, and likely do not understand you well in many ways. Neither is some dichotomic better or worse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I was just thinking about the R thing the other day!