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:
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.
Oh shit, I thought you said "AI" companies and was about to say "nahh, it's the advertisers" lol.
Yes. Ads are a stain on our species and should be outlawed.
They are a waste of resources, clutter and manipulate our minds, and give a ridiculous advantage to those who already have the money to buy them.
Who knew that adverts were the secret power cabal running everything all the time.
They definitely try, but why do we let them?
Because they have everyone addicted using devilishly addictive algorithms, socio-psychological hacks and platforms designed to amplify it all. Meanwhile, we’re still stuck prescribing individual solutions to these deeply systemic structural issues.
You laid it out so well I needed time to process it, my thanks :)
Exactly. There is no systemic response to the issue
Because we're farm animals.
read Subprime Attention Crisis. our surviellance state was implemented to sell products. however, the products didn't sell because online ad models being more efficient than traditional ad models has always been a lie
This is why Josie and the Pussycats is the best movie ever.
(Join the army)
Kind of funny this has to be discussed in shower thoughts when its a central theme of our entire world at the moment.
Agree. Which is why I get so irrationally annoyed when sharing a good piece of journalism that's not catering to ad-clicks and the peanut gallery here grabs their torches and pitchforks while shouting "PaYwALL!" despite me posting the gist of the article in the post body (enough to get the gist but not the full article for copyright reasons). It's one of several reasons why I don't even bother anymore.
Like, good journalism costs money. That money's gotta come from somewhere if you want good journalists to be able to eat and keep doing what they do.
That's all well and fine but if you're presenting the topic for discussion on a public forum you're limiting the audience. The gist isn't enough for complete discussion. So the cries about it being paywalled are completely justified.
good journalism costs money
How much money?
The problem with this "x costs money" rhetoric is that x is usually trying to maximize profit, not give a fair deal.
How can I tell they’re good journalists without reading their stuff first?
By reading the gist that OP provided and deciding if you want to read more.
What if I want to read more but not enough to go find my wallet and hand over personal information?
What if you want a cookie, but not enough to go to the grocery store and buy some cookies?
Then you don't get any fucking cookies.
What if you want a cookie, but not enough to go to the grocery store and buy some cookies?
I fixed that for you:
What if you want a cookie, but not enough to go to the grocery store and buy some cookies, after showing your ID card for its number to be written up?
despite me posting the gist of the article in the post body (enough to get the gist but not the full article for copyright reasons)
when you (and others) do that, it is the best thing on the news/science/sharing articles communities. lets me know whether the article is something i'm interested in reading and something i can comment intelligently on or just something i can shitpost about. i really appreciate it, just thought i'd let you know
I think the answer always comes down to capitalism
Consumerism.
Consumerism is a symptom of capitalism. Capitalism is the illness
Advertising is one of the most prolific environmental pollutants of economic activity, and needs to become as socially acceptable as smoking.
I was thinking about this earlier today.
It’s amazing to me that in my lifetime, ads went from a thing that companies got to do as an extra once they had succes all the way to a thing that runs everything everywhere.
Nowadays if you don’t have ads in some form abusing the algorithm (which is in itself designed to be abused) then you get nowhere.
(Also holy shit this has a lot of comments, seems like people have this on their liver somewhat)
people have this on their liver somewhat
Interesting, I've never heard that phrase. Are you a native English speaker, or was that brought through another language? I'm reminded of how in Farsi, the liver is used in phrases that most other languages don't use it for. Like, instead of calling someone you love your 'heart", you call them your "liver," but it carries the same intent.
Oh yes, I hadn’t thought about that! Having something on your liver is an expression that’s native to the Dutch language (afaik).
Meaning something that’s annoying, bothering you, gnawing at your conscience, pissing you off,…
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.
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.
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.
You're right overall, but the mechanism you listed about advertising only appearing near safe content is not that big of a deal compared to other mechanisms at play:
Advertising breaks this. It lets you spend money on psychological manipulation to get people to buy your product, instead of just trying to produce a better product. True conservative capitalists should fucking hate advertising for distorting the economy, and letting big companies pay advertising money to drown innovative competition, but there are very few of those left these days.
i.e. I can read everything there is to learn about two different laptops, watch YouTube videos, read all the specs and reviews, and after about two hours of research I'll know everything there is to know. A company can try and provide me with more information about their product to sway me, but at that point it's probably ineffective because I know everything about them already. However if they bombard me with slick fun ads that evoke certain emotions in me over and over and over and over and over again, it will create an emotional bias towards one over the other.
This distinction is super important because it is what leads to most of advertising's ills: most specifically engagement driven algorithms, which social media uses to keep you scrolling and are what are truly destroying society. The amount of human time and effort wasted to them is incalculable, the amount of languished relationships, neglected kids, over tired and angry people etc. is truly jaw droppingly damaging, and it is fundamentally because advertising is a cheap way to manipulate you into buying something, and unlike true education, it's effectiveness keeps scaling with volume.