this post was submitted on 07 Oct 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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Commenter was referring to its youth in the early 00s, and by that time mobile phones were ubiquitous and thanks to carrier subsidizing also pretty affordable.
The mentioned (preinstalled) app functions already came up during the switch away from simple text based displays in the second half of the 90s (as well as the texting you mentioned).
You are partly right, though, before that time items where more of a "single purpose" type.
But even then, miniaturization and mass-production had already rendered the exact "You won't have a calculator in your pocket all the time" phrase nonsensical, with everybody typically having lying around several of the free tiny giveaway solar-powered calculators in bags and drawers.
I would guess that the original phrases the potential collective false memory is based upon, were something more like "you won't be able to use a calculator in every situation", which then got transmogrified over time by social reinforcement to the plausible sounding and much more exciting "You won't have a calculator in your pocket all the time" trope.
I remember being told it, and my memory is freaky good. I think the assumption that it's the Mandela Effect is pretty weak here. This isn't documented in the same way as the death of a famous figure, or a brand logo, or a book series. You don't have the counter evidence, and your argument assumes that teachers are perfectly knowledgeable and rational.
The era I'm referring to is mostly the '90s, and a bit of the early 2000s. The first iPhone, and the normalization of actual screens, was the late '00s. Even flip phones with basic screens didn't become common until the mid '00s. The technology you're talking about definitely existed, but wasn't that common. Cell phone technology, and adoption, really skyrocketed from 2000-10.
And teachers say nonsense all the time. I have a distinct memory of second grade, learning about the prime meridian and equator, and that if you cut the Earth along either one you got halves called "hemispheres". I asked what you get if you cut along both the prime meridian and the equator, and my teacher said "Well, you get a broken globe", and then continued on.
Teachers are just people. They don't predict technological trends, they say things based on their past knowledge to get kids to engage with the material. Assuming you've never tried to teach children things for an extended period of time, it results in saying a lot of stuff that's more rhetorical than factual.