this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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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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We all know the pattern by now. Something minor happens. One of the affected parties doesn't want people talking about it. So they go on a crusade against anyone tha makes a small mention about the thing which ends up making the thing super famous.

It is called the Streisand effect after Barbara Streisand who famously went through such a thing. But for all the fame the effect has, how many people actually still remember what it was originally about, without looking it up?

I certainly don't. I'm pretty sure I looked it up once but apparently it wasn't interesting enough to remember. This just proves once again that ignoring the thing is much more effective than trying to silence talk about the thing.

Kind of similar to the Watergate scandal and all subsequent -gates. I think it's about some spy drama revealing the president's crimes at the Watergate Hotel that led to Richard Nixon resigning but that's about it. And that's probably wrong.

Now that I think about it (I should really get out of this shower) there are probably tons of idioms that are even further removed from their origin. I bet some are so far removed that we don't even register them as being idioms. They're just words.

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[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 14 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Somebody took shots from the air of her home. She tried to get them removed from the public sphere. That caused headlines and as a result more people saw them attached to these news stories than ever would have if she hadn't made an issue out of it.

Didn't google, didn't read the other comments.

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Nah dude, that was Nelson Mandela. You're thinking of the Berenstein Effect.

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 1 points 4 hours ago

You can take your gaslight and shove it up your Baader-Meinhof-Effect!

[–] Hello_there@fedia.io 24 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Streisand didn't want aerial images of her house to be available on the internet. The subsequent outrage made it so those pictures got on newspapers nationwide.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 11 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Well, that actually doesn't seem unreasonable.

"Please stop photographing my private property."

Pictures of property go in newspapers instead

I mean......she has a point.....

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 20 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Thing is, it wasn’t labeled as HER house; I don’t even think the photographer knew. They just took a picture of a large house on a beachside cliff.

Once she began making a big deal out of it though, every newspaper and website had it published. She made it worse by making it a thing. It was the original celebrity self-own of the internet era.

[–] radix@lemmy.world 9 points 14 hours ago

And it was inside a huge (10k+) batch of pictures documenting the entire California coastline. Basically nobody had even seen it at the time she, or at least her lawyer, threw a fit about it.

[–] Trex202@lemmy.world -1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Victim blaming and gaslighting

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

??? How am I blaming her? Am I misunderstanding you?

[–] Trex202@lemmy.world -2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The Streisand effect itself is victim blaming

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

There was no "victim" originally. She turned herself into one by pointing out that it was her house. Before that nobody knew.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 14 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

It was about Barbara Streisand trying to keep her house(?) out of the media or something. I can't remember what it was she was trying to hide, but I am 70% certain it had something to do with a property.

[–] popekingjoe@lemmy.world 13 points 16 hours ago

Some photographer took a picture of a random cliff that looked amazing in the sunlight and that picture just happened to include her home at the time. Except no one knew that and her subsequent blow up in trying to get the photo removed led to everyone knowing that her home was in the picture, and if she hadn't made a fuss, it would have continued being a secret.

[–] dontsayaword@piefed.social 9 points 17 hours ago

I have a pretty bad memory and I still knew what caused the name. But I was aware of it when it happened, not learning about it much later. That probably helps.

[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 9 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

it was about this photographThe original image of Barbra Streisand's cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, which she attempted to suppress in 2003

Of course I went to the wikipedia article to get a link the actual image to post here, but, to answer your question: yes I did in fact remember what the photo looks like without looking it up.

I'd forgotten that the term was coined by Mike Masnick, though.

[–] radix@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago

I do. I've been reading Techdirt for over 25 years, so I'm sure I read the original post where the term was coined at the time it was first published.

[–] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

🙋 Language evolves in weird tangential ways. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra isn't too far off from reality tbh.

[–] SGforce@lemmy.ca 4 points 17 hours ago

It was really the south park episode that did it.