this post was submitted on 31 Mar 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:

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Pretty sure we are the only animals with pink rings around our mouth. It's flipping weird.

It probably helps with verbal language understanding as humans often use mouth movements to interpret words (see McGurk effect). But I still think it's weird.

Big pink rings.

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[–] protist@retrofed.com 6 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Evolutionarily, it probably helps with both speech and nonverbal language, i.e. facial expressions

[–] daannii@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah that's my guess. Since we use language so much and are social. It would help to make facial cues like the mouth shape, more visible.

I speculated that lighter skinned people have more pink lips and are generally thinner, compared to darker skinned because darker skinned people generally have larger lips, which would make up for any visibility loss from less contrast.

Humans just really need to see what shape the mouth is at any given moment.

That's kinda weird too even if it makes sense.

[–] aMockTie@piefed.world 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

My understanding is that focus on the mouth in social interactions is also influenced by culture. That's why some cultures generally represented a happy face with the emoticon :) while others used ^_^

The former is focused on the mouth and the eyes lack meaningful expression, while the latter is the opposite.