this post was submitted on 12 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:
- 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
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- 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
- Posts must be original/unique
- 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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I find it wild that people are still under the impression that advertising doesn't work. I get it, you block ads, you aggressively ignore them, you feel like they never influence you. Same here. But they do influence us. A little bit here and there. Then consider that most people are way more suggestible than we are. If ads didn't work, they would've never been a thing.
You might think you cannot afford to buy most things advertised, but the numbers don't lie. They'll get you eventually. Even if it's just $3. Not having money never really stopped people from spending it anyhow.
It is because it works that I spend so much time trying to block them. I don't need them trying to manipulate me, gaslight me, or try to convince me I need shit I don't want.
It's incredibly toxic.
It's unlikely that you're exceptional in your resistance to advertising.
It's just that 95% of all advertising fails to hit its intended target.
I am definitely in the vast minority of people who go so far to not see ads. Not many people will tinker with a raspberry pi for hours just to avoid the possibility of an ad appearing in video streaming services. Lemmy is a bubble that way. You'd rarely meet someone in real life that uses pihole for example but there's thousands on here who do.
And I think the number is higher than 95%. All it takes is a tiny percentage for it to all be worth it.
it took you HOURS to install pihole?
It took me hours to setup a raspberry pi for tv viewing with all the hardware and software I needed working.
Anymore gotchas?
I've never used pihole but I'm sure you could spend hours tweaking it if you wanted to anyhow.
I'm just not even sure what your point would be no matter how I interpret this. If pihole is quick to setup, you really think many people use it? It's probably way under .0001% of households using that.
Do you really believe that? $3 isn't going to get me the things I see ads for that I'd actually be tempted by. As to things $3 or below, I'm never shopping at the craft store that hates gay people. I'm never buying from the top fast food places either. These are things I already made decisions on for moral reasons and I've never swayed on in all my years, so why on Earth would an ad make a difference?
I don't think advertisers (or those that think any old ad is bound to be effective) consider that there are some of us who make decisions based on our own criteria. I recognize that I'm not like most people, but to say that such ads are still going to "get [me] eventually" is nonsense.
Maybe for some, but that's again not something that applies to everyone. I don't even have a credit card. I've had nearly 20 years of adulthood in which to get one, have bought/leased cars and rented apartments without a problem (despite no card, paying off student loans means my credit score is pretty good), and I prefer the security of only spending money I've already got. Advertisers can have fun trying to squeeze ~~blood~~ money from a stone.
I love how many unique people who are immune to adds here are.
You are being effected by adds, you will do purchace decision effected by add campaing. You have done purchace decision effected by add campaign.
You can have moral standing and boycot companies. You can decite you dont use that one brand, but as long as you are consumer, your buying habits will always be slightly effected by adds.
I don't really understand this comment. You actually really believe you are the one person in history completely unaffected by messaging? I cannot imagine thinking that. I have no doubt it would be trivial to disprove this to you in an in person conversation but I'm not getting dragged into an argument here for it.
You probably simply never noticed. Maybe the grocery chain you buy at. Maybe a particularly flashy packaging of a food item in said grocery store. Maybe an outrageous fun sex toy you saw in porn. Maybe you're subscribed to a Patreon somewhere. Maybe you have a t-shirt of your favorite show. Do you really make all these decisions completely conscious of all advertising you saw before, making sure that you do not miss any better alternatives with worse advertising?
No person can think so much about all their decisions to spend money. No one can be so perfectly conscious of every single sensory input. Advertising works on everyone, you just don't even notice when it works on you.
Aw, I wish I didn't need to budget every cent, but with the small amount of pocket change I've got to buy things, being careful with it becomes normal. Most of the food I buy is straight up raw vegetables, or store brand frozen/canned items (which are bought because they're cheapest. Or is "advertisement" so broad of a term that it applies to ordinary price tags?) Clothing is whatever's affordable, fits, and looks and feels good enough. When you're teetering on the edge of homelessness (and have experienced it three times), survival becomes your main priority. Penny pinching is unavoidable. Luxury spending becomes a pipe dream.
Even if ads are still sneaking info into my brain, I'm hard-pressed to think of any purchases I've made where brand names factor in. I'm really trying to think of something here, but even the less common things I've spent money on were chosen through experience (like a game I played with a friend, then decided I wanted a copy of) or research (like when I bought a solar generator last year. I'd never even heard of the company before I sought it out for myself.)
I guess a local Chinese food flyer put on a doorknob counts as advertising that works, though even then if they don't have decent veg options and prices, it's going to be a no-go. So sure, that's your "gotcha." Chinese food flyers. All the money spent on ads around the world, and the only thing I can recall purchasing based on it took some person taking a walk and hanging menus on doors.
I get it, ads are designed to manipulate, to put ideas into people's heads as a latent reminder, like a virus waiting for the right moment to strike. Maybe some day if I actually make enough money to not have to be extraordinarily careful with it, more of them might get a chance to work. Who knows. Right now, price is the biggest pain point, overriding brand recognition. With the way things are going, I don't expect that to change any time soon.
Perhaps the best advertisement would be if a company decided to lobby for higher wages - that'd definitely make a company name stick in my head in a positive way, and would provide me the opportunity to spend money on them, to boot!