this post was submitted on 05 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:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. 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
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. 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.

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[–] CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (2 children)

To me, it is exactly the same as people who linked lmgtfy.com or responded RTFM. If you send me an LLM summary, I’m assuming you’re claiming that I’m the asshole for bothering you. If I am being lazy, I’ll take the hint. If I’m struggling to find a way to do the research myself, either because I’m not sure how to properly research it myself, or because LLMs have made the internet nigh-unusable, I’m gonna clock you as a tremendous asshole.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I think there's an important nuance to lmgtfy or RTFM. These two were clearly identifiable as the kind of - sometimes snarky - min-effort response, and sometimes absolutely justified (e.g. if I googled the question of OP and the very first result correctly answers their question, which I have made the effort of checking myself).

For the slop responses however, the receiver has to invest sometimes considerable time into reading & processing it to even understand that it might be pure slop. And in doubt, as a reader we are left with the moral dilemma of potentially offending the writer by asking "Did you just send me LLM output?"

It is both harder to identify and it drives a wedge into online (and personal) relationships because it adds a layer of doubt or distrust. This slop shit is poison for internet friendships. Those tech bros all need to fuck off and use their money for a permanent coke trip straight until they become irrelevant. :/

[–] CombatWombatEsq@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Oh yeah, I was thinking of people who link to llm output, like this: https://chatgpt.com/share/697e8957-9494-8010-beb9-eb90c4760518

Copy-pasting llm summaries is definitely worse.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 0 points 3 days ago

It's really not that hard to identify the soulless drivel output by an LLM in an email. Nobody writes like that, not even a passive agressive middle management psychopath.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 points 3 days ago (3 children)

RTFM

This one really sucked post 2001 or so when everything stopped coming with a fucking manual to read. What M and I supposed to R, guy?

[–] mech@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

Them: Read The Fucking Manual!

The Manual

                     The unset builtin treats attempts to unset array
                     subscripts @ and * differently depending on whether
                     the array is indexed or associative, and differently
                     than in previous versions.
              •      Arithmetic commands ( ((...)) ) and the expressions
                     in an arithmetic for statement can be expanded more
                     than once.
              •      Expressions used as arguments to arithmetic
                     operators in the [[ conditional command can be
                     expanded more than once.
              •      The expressions in substring parameter brace
                     expansion can be expanded more than once.
              •      The expressions in the $((...)) word expansion can
                     be expanded more than once.
              •      Arithmetic expressions used as indexed array
                     subscripts can be expanded more than once.
              •      test -v, when given an argument of A[@], where A is
                     an existing associative array, will return true if
                     the array has any set elements.  Bash-5.2 will look
                     for and report on a key named @.
              •      The ${parameter[:]=value} word expansion will return
                     value, before any variable-specific transformations
                     have been performed (e.g., converting to lowercase).
                     Bash-5.2 will return the final value assigned to the
                     variable.
              •      Parsing command substitutions will behave as if
                     extended globbing (see the description of the shopt
                     builtin above) is enabled, so that parsing a command
                     substitution containing an extglob pattern (say, as
                     part of a shell function) will not fail.  This
                     assumes the intent is to enable extglob before the
                     command is executed and word expansions are
                     performed.  It will fail at word expansion time if
                     extglob hasn't been enabled by the time the command
                     is executed.```  
[–] BassTurd@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

The only time it's been kind of relevant in my dealings is the Arch wiki, because it really is a solid resource. However, sometimes my issue is a specific one and I need more than general information on a process. RTFM ruins communities when someone is looking for support. It's just an entitled response to someone asking for help.

[–] Klear@quokk.au 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's not meant as an actual manual. What you're really supposed to do is comb through ad-ridden google results until you find that one 10 years old reddit thread where someone thanks a deleted comment for solving the issue you have.

until you find that one 10 years old reddit thread where someone thanks a deleted comment for solving the issue you have.

I wasn't gonna upvote you, but that one made me chuckle. Also because I have posted many of those "deleted comments" and wiped my reddit profile as clean as I could before leaving years ago.