this post was submitted on 29 Jul 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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Not really, words have meaning
If you want a concrete example of the difference, let's say I kidnap someone and keep them as a slave. That's simply me enslaving someone.
Now let's say I kidnap someone and sell them to someone else who keeps them as a slave. What have I done? I've trafficked a human.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
The name for an entire epoch of history contradicts your claim.
It ain't trafficking if it's legal.
Yeah, human trafficking leads to slavery, actively supports slavery, funnels slaves to slave holders, etc… But trafficking is just that. Moving something (in this case, a human) from A to B.
Saying they’re the same thing is sort of like saying that making meth and smoking meth are the same thing. They each can’t realistically exist on a mass scale without the other, but they’re not the same thing.
So I guess we can't call it "The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade" because none of the people on the boats had been assigned work duties yet?
Cute quip, but the trans-Atlantic slave trade was specifically trafficking slaves. I even said in my original comment that human trafficking can ferry slaves to slave owners. Human trafficking refers to the broader crime of illegally transporting humans, regardless of their status as slaves.
Someone illegally ferrying immigrants across a border is engaging in human trafficking. Are the immigrants enslaved just because they were illegally trafficked? Even if they go about their merry lives in the new country after crossing the border and shaking hands with the trafficker? Because if we define human trafficking strictly by the trade of slaves, then the immigrants who got trafficked would be slaves, right?
Someone illegally transporting their own child across country lines during a custody dispute is engaging in human trafficking. Is that child now their parent’s slave, just because they were illegally trafficked across country lines? I guess so, because trafficking equals slavery, right?
Or maybe we just accept that the two are different crimes. Words mean things, and falsely equating the two is (at best) disingenuous and misleading.
Does this mean that human trafficking is always illegal, whereas slavery may or may not be illegal depending on which century and country we’re talking about?
No, human trafficking was very much legal when slavery was the norm. Not all human trafficking, but the one that specifically was about trafficking slaves.
Just recently looked it up
Trafficking = the act of buying or selling usually illegal goods
Source
I guess you’re using that loophole created by the word “usually”. Even though trafficking is usually illegal by definition, it doesn’t always have to be. Building upon that, you can actually use that word for legal activities too, even though most people will misunderstand you as they are automatically thinking of illegal activities.
Well, by definition, to traffick something is to illegally buy or sell something.
Buying, selling, and owning people has not always been illegal, so it's more that humans couldn't be trafficked, depending on if it was allowed.
Oh, that’s a good point.
This means that if there’s a restriction on something such as beer and cigarettes, you can legally trade them as long as you follow the rules. That wouldn’t be trafficking.
However, if you’re trying to cross the border with an absurd quantity of cigarettes hidden inside the chassis of your lorry, that could be considered cigarette trafficking.
If you hide heroin in there instead, it’s always drug trafficking, no matter what.
On the other hand, if you’re working for the East India Company and you’re shipping opium to China in the 1800s, it’s perfectly legal according to the Brits. The Chinese would have probably called that drug trafficking though.
non english native here wouldnt the trafficking of beer, cigarrettes and drugs over a border be smuggeling as well? and if so, could one smuggel a person as well?
Yeah, smuggling is moving the illegal goods. Trafficking is buying or selling illegal goods.
A lot of times, they're done together by the same person, but they can also be separately by different people.
I buy some heroin, I'm trafficking. I give it to you to take to my buddy across the border, you're smuggling. He takes it from you and sells it to others, he's trafficking.
And if the goods being illegally moved are people, then they are indeed smuggling people. That's what mules do.
Yep! So there is definitely a very real difference between the concept of slavery and human trafficking. They often go hand in hand, but they're distinct processes.
To have even more fun, there's also smuggling, which is moving the goods illegally, and that is different than the buying and selling, and that is different than owning.