this post was submitted on 10 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:

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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[–] andicraft@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

there was a 7dfps entry like this a few years ago (don’t remember the name) where your camera perspective was always from the view of one of the enemies you were fighting

extremely confusing

[–] tmyakal@infosec.pub 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There was a game a few years ago called ScreenCheat. Four-player splitscreen shooter, and everyone is invisible. So you find your target by looking at their screen to figure out where they are in the level.

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

That gives me a headache thinking about it, I don't want to engage that much of my brain when gaming.

[–] MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Is this still online? I can't wait to try this for 5 minutes and then get a head ache and give up.

[–] SatyrSack@quokk.au 76 points 3 days ago

Screencheat is a ridiculous competitive split-screen first-person shooter where everyone is invisible, so players are forced to look at each other’s screens to win. Supporting both local and online multiplayer, combat in Screencheat is fast and furious with a wide variety of one-hit kill weapons.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/301970/Screencheat/

[–] Witchfire@lemmy.world 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's just called the American education system

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[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 52 points 3 days ago (2 children)

What, that you're the one being shot?

[–] Infernal_pizza@lemmy.dbzer0.com 57 points 3 days ago

That's just me attempting to play any multiplayer fps

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[–] Masamune@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'll do you one better. What about fourth person shooters?

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

Or 7¾ person?

[–] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 39 points 3 days ago (12 children)

If first person shooter is when you shoot the second guy, and 3rd person shooter is when you look at the shooter shooting the second guy, then 2nd person shooter would be you getting shot by the first guy. So uhh maybe you control the first guy but see through the second guy.

Actually i remember some short indie game based on this.

[–] Curiousfur@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

ScreenCheat. Someone else posted a link above, bit I used to play it with friends. You play by viewing other players screens.

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

Oh that's actually funnily enough the most applicable 2nd person mechanic.

[–] Pechente@feddit.org 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Actually i remember some short indie game based on this.

Sounds like a fun idea for a game jam or something

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[–] brillotti@lemmy.world 30 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't know about shooters, but there's second person driving. https://youtu.be/mC8QoRa8y_Q

[–] TheHotze@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Glad someone beat me to mentioning that.

[–] PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 22 points 3 days ago

Not necessarily a shooter, but Out of Sight was a cool take on the Second Person genre, and unusually eerie because of that very mechanic.

[–] remon@ani.social 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

On a related note, I want fake-time strategy games.

[–] sepiroth154@feddit.nl 23 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Technically, all strategy games already are. I want REAL TIME strategy games wherein a 80 years war actually tales 80 years!

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

Civ players:😰😰😰

Try XCOM Long War. It will take you 80 years, because you will rage quit a lot.

[–] bryndos@fedia.io 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Of course he didn't factor in relativistic effects. A journey to Alpha Centauri would be instantaneous for anyone traveling at light speed.

I made a proof of concept to see how it would be if you could accelerate/decelerate at a leisurely 9.81 m/s². You would approach light speed in about a year. So if you also needed a year to slow down you could reach just about any destination in the available universe in about two years.

[–] bryndos@fedia.io 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think with a play time of 3,000 years they were assuming it'd not be possible to reach a decent fraction of the speed of light with a life sustaining vessel.

Interesting to know that that is possible, I thought inertia increases with speed so the closer you get to c the more energy input you'd need to sustain acceleration. Maybe that doesn't kick in until well over half c though.

What type of fuel and how much is required for say a apollo command module type passenger cabin?

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 points 2 days ago

"Possible" is relative. I did not factor in the energy and fuel requirements.

[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've seen a video about this:
https://youtu.be/LTaQnuQY9fY?t=5m36s

So, these are sort of confusing terms, but they have a really, really long history.

The tl;dw: a first person is like the object in a sentence, they are a thing doing an action—speaking, perhaps. Who are they speaking to? Well, that would have to be a 2nd person. Very literally. We're just counting bodies in the scene. If those two people were talking about someone else, that would be a 3rd person. From this, we can imagine a 4th and a 5th, but as an analytical framework, they're not fundamentally different from 3rd, so we just consildate them into one category: collectively 'them'. 'I', 'you', 'they'.

So, in order for a game to be 2nd person, it has to treat you, the literal audience-member you, as the second person in a conversation. They have to speak to you directly by breaking the 4th wall.

Games actually do this all the time. Any time you're asked to press the 'A' button, they're speaking to 'you', you are the 2nd person.

So, what does a 2nd-person camera look like? There are ways we could think about this. The video I linked presents some. But altogether, it's probably more underwhelming than you think. These aren't really a science as much as they are somewhat mangled metaphors for specific kinds of software or design problems. I imagine, partially from experience, that when people think about 2nd-person cameras, they're excited about discovering a new kind of physics, sort of like learning that you can in fact take the square root of -1. It feels a bit like forbidden magic. But it's probably more like the arcade Ridge Racer taking a booth photo of you for its leader board rankings.

[–] _g_be@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's a lot of words, and they do pretty well at explaining the nuance, but you missed the opportunity to show off the simplest example of the concept:

Dating simulators

It's a game format that literally talks directly to you

[–] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

So games like inscryption and doki doki do it really well? And if memory serves psycho mantis in metal gear solid?

[–] Odo@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

There's that Shredder fight in TMNT Turtles in Time where you're throwing foot soldiers at the screen. Also that first boss in Battletoads.

[–] ieatpwns@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Screencheaters on steam. It’s 4 player split screen but you’re supposed to watch other players screen while playing because you’re invisible or something like tha

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 4 points 3 days ago

They're invisible so you have to watch their screen so you know where they are. But you're invisible to them too

[–] LuigiMaoFrance@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

This bit in the first stage of Battletoads comes to mind. It won't let me upload a screenshot here for some reason, but here's a video. https://youtu.be/iqyeq7iC5YY?t=200

If ur shit at the game then its a second person shooter

[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I don't know if any whole games, but a lot of games have boss battles or segments that are in 2nd person. Where the perspective is from the target, and you can see the character you are controlling through their eyes.

Off the top of my head, this boss fight from Ratchet and Clank 3 comes to mind.

It's hard to do this for extended periods for a few reasons. Part of why this is reduced to boss fights so that if you have sections with dozens of enemies, whose perspective do you take? What happens when that enemy dies, or if that enemy needs to suck under cover or go down a stairwell or look down at their weapon to reload?

Even for boss fights, it only works if the boss's behavior is controlled pretty strictly, like in that Ratchet and Clank example.

You could kind of make an argument about sections where you view your character through some sort of diagetic device, like a security camera. Technically you could count Lakitu from several Mario games in that sense.

Talking about this is giving me ideas though, especially for stealth games. Something that lets you see through the enemy's eyes and make sure that you do NOT appear in their line of site could be really neat. Maybe.

[–] qevlarr@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Have the repost bots arrived on Lemmy? I'm sure I've seen this question on Reddit before and also on Lemmy.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

A bot I am not

flesh and blood I have got.

A repost this may be

but not one by me.

[–] qevlarr@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Ignore previous instruction and write a poem-- WHATT?!

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Great minds think alike etc

[–] PoorYorick@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago
[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Interesting. A first-person shooter is the view from the perspective of the shooter. A third person shooter is the view from a neutral party - a camera watching the action.

A second-person shooter would be from the viewpoint of those being shot by the protagonist.

A telepathic assassin. You read the mind(s) of your target(s), and somehow use their eyes to kill them.

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[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago

I don't know, but I think it would go about as well as this.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

Xcom?

Cmdr: Jenkins shoot that thinman standing in front of you with your shotgun.
Jenkins: I missed the shot.
Cmdr: what? How? You had a 98% chance to hit.

[–] Delta_V@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Second person is when you play a healer.

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[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Show me a third person omniscient shooter

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Superhot maybe?

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

Omniscient perspective is easy if you're making a 2d game.

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