this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026
140 points (97.9% liked)
Showerthoughts
42653 readers
696 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 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I had no need of encryption before the internet. Because no one does those things. The government doesn't have the resources to walk into everyone's houses, even if I weren't protected by the 4th amendment.
It's only with the advent of the internet and mass surveillance that I have any need of encryption. If I needed to speak privately with someone, I'd visit them. Or even just pick up a phone because wiretaps require a warrant.
It doesn't have to be the government. It can be a suspicious spouse, a nosy family member, a judgemental neighbor, an opportunistic burglar, even a murderer. You're thinking in way too narrow of a scope.
But to really drive the point home, since "no one" does those things, please leave your front door unlocked on Monday for me. Thanks!
People have been cheating for millennia without the benefit of encryption.
There are 350 million Americans. My door is unlocked most Mondays. Good luck. I don't even own a gun. Find me and you win.
Oh, my sweet summer-child.
Your local police may need a warrant for a wiretap, but do you think intelligence services care about that? Let alone foreign ones?
Legal requirements don't stop the really problematic entities from spying on you. Privacw was easier back in the day, because it required effort and manpower to surveil you.
Nowadays, an automated computer program can do it.
It didn't matter. The government has limited money for that shit. They couldn't even spy on everything they wanted to, much less the general population.
There you go, making my point for me. That program wouldn't be possible without the internet. So encryption became needed by us nobodies because of the internet.
Well, yes. I'm not arguing against your general idea. Just the notion that laws would protect you.
But strictly speaking, the internet isn't a requirement for automated mass surveillance. Powerful enough computers to analyze and process our phone calls would have sufficed. The internet just happened to predate those.
And yes, it's always also a matter of ressources. But if you rely on that, your privacy depends on the assumption, that you're just not interesting enough to be surveilled. Since you had no way to verify that, relying on that notion is somewhat similar to the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument today and yields the protection of your privacy to the decisions of the surveillant.