Instructions unclear, upvoted without reading.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
169 points (97.2% liked)
Showerthoughts
35445 readers
845 users here now
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
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- 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
- Posts must be original/unique
- 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.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Most social media is the wrong format for long-term discussion. Whatever you post, it will soon be replaced by something newer.
Consumers just want that quick dopamine hit every time they open the app.
There are still quite a few phpBB-style bulletin boards out there with threads that survive for years. I think that's the social media you're looking for.
What do you mean by first come, first served exactly? Are you refering specifically to interactions between news outlets and users?
I mean, the quality of content hardly matters if you're late. If you waited just one day to respond to this post, no one would notice your comment.
This is Lemmy I regularly get replies to three month old comments.
but I won't get the insightful reply someone else makes next week unless they reply to me.
Why shouldn't you get a well-considered answer? I'm sure you'll take another look at the thread. It does happen, but then you're usually one of the few people who read these well-considered answers.
I'm not saying that there aren't well-researched answers on social media, I'm just getting at the fact that there's time pressure if you want your answer to reach a certain audience.
Maybe one day we will be able to sort by old posts that have got a bunch of good, new comments.
That would be great.
That's true, of course. But these responses are hardly visible to most people. Of course, the thread is still online years later, but since people today generally only use social media apps, they no longer see these responses, no matter how valuable they may be. If anything, they only perceive these delayed responses as part of the data sets of LLMs – but then mostly without reference to the original content.
I'm either too high or not high enough to understand that.
What I mean by this is that every topic is treated like breaking news on social media. However, news reports are characterized by the fact that they are usually outdated by the next day because they are only relevant for a limited period of time. This is not true for many topics discussed on social media. In fact, it is even possible to repeat something after a certain period of time (e.g., reposting memes), which is impossible with actual news reports.
Most people aren’t into thread necromancy. New post and comments get more replies than the old ones. They aren’t completely forgotten, but the difference in attention is massive.
Again it’s Lemmy.
It’s the difference between two upvotes and three.
Says the guy with 4 upvotes.
Fortunately, you can just sit on it and wait for the inevitable bevvy of reposts.
{Placeholder for a particularly witty comment next time}
It's not like there's only one thread about a specific subject. There's always a new post to add your commentary to, often enough a post of the exact same link/meme/question. If you come late to the first one you see, spend some time refining your idea, wait five minutes, and comment on the next one.
Yes, but there's no guarantee that this topic will ever be discussed again. It's a bit like when you think of a good comeback after a verbal exchange - you have the right argument, but it doesn't matter anymore. Next time, you'll be prepared, but next time may never come.
There are no guarantees in life. Missing out on something isn't a problem with where you find that thing, and it's not your fault, either. You don't get to do everything you want, sorry.
Sure. But what I'm getting at is that this way of consuming information likely leads to people being anything but well informed. Because of this social media "newswoth" logic, they mainly read content that isn't very well thought out – if only because it was written under time pressure.
William Randolph Hearst has entered the chat.
I guess that is true, but that would only be a negative thing if you wanted attention(which is not necessarily a bad thing). If one is not sure people would respond your comment, one can always mention a post from the past and ask whatever information you were looking. And I would argue this happens in real life aswell, you can't always force a joke on an old topic at a dinner or party.
This, basically
That same problem still exists even when sorting by upvotes, because the earlier a comment is posted the more people will see and be able to vote on it, pushing it higher.
That’s a very good point. Also, the later comments don’t get seen by many people, and that’s why they don’t get many votes either.
Obviously, sorting changes all that, but I don’t think many people sort posts and comments by new. If you don’t touch the settings, things are sorted by hot.
What kind of slob gets their opinions from the comments sections of a local news outlet?
Hell, do major publications even have comments sections anymore? I'm lucky to see the first paragraph of a story after the barrage of "Please Sign In!" pop-ups. Nevermind getting all the way down to the bottom of the article to see what some random assholes think about it.
I mean...
[Gestures broadly at the state of the world]
People see headlines and the comment section of the social media platform where that headline was posted.
Web 2.0 was such a nice idea on paper.
It was great when they'd tricked investors into giving users an ecosystem with no (obvious) ads.
That makes sense
The First Mover Advantage is not exclusive to social media. It's inherent to life in scarcity. First to run to the feast gets the pick of the food. First to run from the tiger has the most targets between the tiger and their bum. First company to sell a thingle gets 100% of the market until a competitor arrives, including 100% name recognition, 100% network dominance, etc.
I don't understand the point of your comment. It's the First-Mover Advantage, not the "First Mover always wins in perpetuity".
First-mover disadvantages win sometimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_handicap_of_a_head_start
Ahhh, I didn't know about this, but it makes sense. Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
That is what aggregators served to defeat. Like Digg, reddit, or Lemmy. That's what votes and "top hot trending" filters are all for.
Not saying the resolve the issue, just saying this is well known and understood
First!
Social media?
More like... The regular media. RIP journalism
I dunno, somehow tumblr seems to do ok with the considered takes.
What you do is you go into the tumblr mines to screenshot someone else's considered takes, and then be the first to post it somewhere else.
Wh- whaaaaat? Ha ha. I don’t - that’s not - I would never! OMG that’s just so crazy to think. That people would, y’know, do. That.
Well it's not like people are really here for long format posts. Those people are probably reading books.