I get my county's rural, local newspaper. The stories are all relevant to my personal experience and typically quite well written. Local politics, goings on and such. It's nice to have a little piece of life in the 80s back.
this post was submitted on 21 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.
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- 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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You are lucky tbh. So many "local" newspapers are owned by giant corporations. Here in Canada we even have a boatload that are owned by those same American corporations. I helps push narratives among people who are more likely to be isolated or disenfranchised and it works really well.
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I tried a few years ago but couldn't get over the absurd amount of advertising and dumb bullshit so I canceled my subscription. I would love to spend Sunday mornings drinking coffee and reading the paper like an old-timey person but the paper is at least 90% garbage. The 10% that isn't garbage is poorly edited and often has typos. It felt like I was being insulted every time I opened it up.
This right here. I remember when finding an error in the paper was like finding a four-leaf clover, now it's more like finding an article without an error is that rare!
The occasional ETAOIN SHRDLU :)
My mom worked for a small paper as a linotype operator around the late 60s to early 70s. :)
It was 50% garbage in the 90s and quickly spiraled out of control as the internet grew in popularity.
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Dunno where you live but even old genZ would remember that.
My parents were still getting the local paper around the mid-2010s, so can confirm. Definitely not as common, but definitely still happens.
Just ordered the newspaper for my grandparents while I read the occassional entry in the e-paper.
I'm so old, I was long an adult before people started not reading the newspaper. I subscribed to the newspaper, and it was delivered to my house by a kid on a bicycle. I found my wife through a personal ad in a newspaper, a wife I've been divorced from for 16 years, now. I got all but my most recent job through want ads in the newspaper.
Y'all aren't old for just remembering when other people read the newspaper. Y'all aren't old at all.
Y’all aren’t old at all.
We are old, you are ancient! 😄
Passes mantle to Lichtmetzger You are the boomer now.
I'm so old I remember reading the ingredients on the shampoo bottle because my brother took the bathroom joke book with him after pooping.
I'm so old I remember grabbing The Onion from the free dispenser outside my apartment building.
I'm so old I get a PSA test annually and need to schedule a colonoscopy
I do regret not ordering the matching embroidered "Face" and "Ass" towels from an ad in The Onion when I had a chance.
I thought you meant an actual onion and wondered who puts onions in a dispenser like they were gumballs.
So he could tie one to his belt, as was the style at the time.
You couldn't get white onions because of the war, so they only had those big yellow ones.
Gawd, I HATE onions, but I have observed that many humans love them so much, that I believe a coin-operated Onion dispenser would be a huge success.
But like I said, I DESPISE onions, so my understanding of the human adoration for Onions may be poorly calibrated.
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I'm so old, I worried about getting shingles, and was greatly relieved when I got my second shot.
Get your shingles shots, old folks, or one day you're going to catch it, and you will REGRET not getting that vaccine.
Me, getting the monthly issue of The Onion (America's finest news source, btw): hello
When I was in high school they still delivered newspapers to machines near bus stops. Sometimes I would drop a quarter in to get one so I had something to read on the bus. It was mostly for comics, sports, and current events. When I was done I would leave it on the bus or drop it off in the hallway at school.
Gone are those days.
in the 2000s i was reading it up until the first cellphone(smartphone) came into market.
I'm so old I still get the newspaper daily.
Brosef, I remember when I used to read the newspaper. The $1.25 to get the Sunday paper at the 7-11 because ain't no way I would scrounge and spend 5 quarters in the machine. That's for laundry money!
I'm so old, I remember using newspaper to wipe in the outhouse. Also Sears catalogue. Worst toilet paper ever. It didn't clean anything, just moved stuff around.
You don't take the Sears catalogue into the outhouse for the paper, you take it for the lingerie section. If you need a book of good wiping paper you take the Farmers Almanac
I'm young (mid 20s) but I've started reading my local newspaper. I've been trying to live a slower life and I'm cutting out social media. I even limit lemmy to 30 minutes a day.
I still have subscription for my home town paper, even when i havent lived there for ten years.
The news there are so innocent when compared to big world news. I dont want to only read how wars are going and how the climate change is accelerating. I mean fuck yeah there was strange coloured fox seen on the forest and fuck yeah at the local school fundraiser little Timmy sold record amount of cupcakes.
Used to remember reading the comic strips in the funday times.
As I got older I used to read the Hexham Courant to see who'd been arrested I used to go to school with
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I'm so old I remember being young.
I remember reading newspapers. 🙃
My first job was delivering them.
Those were the days. Also, remember when we got catalogs in the mail?
Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery.
I had a paper route my man. It was decent money for a kid who could barely drive. A shitton of people cared a lot about their newspaper back then and would complain if it was wet or on the grass or wherever.
UK, my dad would go to the cornershop to buy The Mirror.
I was wondering what he was doing with all these mirrors.
Turns out The Mirror is a newspaper.
I've seriously considered getting a newspaper. I know I wouldn't read it every day, but it would probably help ground me into my local community better and keep me a bit more sane.
We recently started getting the news paper because my daughter asked for it for a Christmas present. I personally thought that was weird, but we tried it out. After about a month or so she asked us to cancel it because the news was too depressing.
That smell and sound a newspaper makes when you do the traditional *thwap when you first open it. Not many experiences like it in the world.
People these days say tablet kids and instagram parents are insufferable… but like, we had to read the back of the newspaper you were hiding behind at breakfast while screaming something about Jimmy Carter being a soft bitch.
Did that as a kid. Every day.
Crossword puzzles should be done on actual paper using ink, as our caveman ancestors did and as the gods intended
My mom still gets my dad his newspaper daily.
I remember asking to borrow my parents’ newspaper so I could use my silly putty to make copies of pictures.
Also reading comics, and reusing the newspaper so I could make papier mâche (or other crafts) out of it. I learned to weave by using strips of newspaper to make a mat.
There is an old guy at the deli near me that reads the paper with his coffee.
I also remember being asked to write about current events in school and had to turn to the newspaper to find something current.
Read the funnies every day.
Yeah, but we're so much luckier today with options online. I remember there were definitely tiers of the comics and I read them in a particular order, from the crappy soap-opera one that wasn't funny through (oh I'm gonna piss people off now) the also-crappy ones like Family Circus and Marmaduke and... was it called Love Is? They were always so hokey… then saving ones like Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes for last :)
I did the same thing with food which is why I'm still fat. :(
I used to get so mad at my grandparents for calling them that. They were COMICS, and it was Very Important to call them by the proper name.
I like to think I've loosened up a bit since I was a kid.
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