this post was submitted on 20 Feb 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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- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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That’s an interesting thought, and I would like to add a few things to it.
The whole idea of having ad funded things is fundamentally flawed. It has also become too dominant, and difficult to compete with. Ads are the tool used in this business model, but are they really the root cause of the problems you mentioned? I would say no.
Theoretically, you could still have ads without ruining everything. When other business models aren’t competitive enough, the whole system naturally gravitates to the mess we’re currently in.
I think cheap mobile games have showed that you can charge a small amount of money, and people will be willing to pay up. That way, everything doesn’t have to be ad funded. It’s just that this business model doesn’t appear to be appealing enough in other arenas, and that’s a real problem.
There's no such thing as "competitive enough." Corporate greed is literally insatiable, inherently and by design. There's an entire series of Supreme Court decisions -- not just Citizens United -- that would need to be overturned to fix that.
Do you remember those free "newspapers" that used to choke your mailbox once a week, or your favorite club? With like 75% ad content and a few poorly written articles? That's how I learned about the power of advertisment. The internet just put that in hyperdrive. How much of it is driven by ads these days?
The advertisement-based business model has turned out to be highly successful, just like the newspapers have proven. However, magazines were a hybrid solution. You would pay for the magazine, but there would still be a few ads. Reminds me of modern Netflix actually.
Yeah a lot of what many think of typical internet stuff is just a new turbocharged edition of what has existed for much longer IRL.
emulation's another thing. i was glad to toss the duckstation devs five bucks so's i could keep it easily updated on my phone (i like the psx generation, it's great for that screen size) and so they could hopefully afford to keep working on it. it's been so long i can't remember if they charged or if it was a patreon thing, but five bucks is five bucks.
I think ad funded stuff is the only way to get things done in a capitalist economy. There may be other types of economies that could get by without ads, but we'll never know because this is the world we've created.