this post was submitted on 23 Jan 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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If you agree with the majority then censorship is ok. (lazysoci.al)
submitted 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) by presoak@lazysoci.al to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

I don't think I agree if I read this correctly. I'll specific as to how I understand it.

If I have opinion a, and that's the majority opinion, and any other opinion gets censored, I think I'm fine with that. Hard disagree. I wanna expose myself to nuance and other opinions. Of course there's a time and place when people hate you for nuance and specific opinions but censorship implies a legal framework and enforcement. Sure, there's a lot of majority opinions I hold but I don't want other opinions to get censored or punished on most topics. I wanna hear and learn new things.

Example of something I want censorship on: if someone just repeats NS dog whistles in a clear attempt to instigate, I think it might be good to censored them / punish them in some way. Not in a murderer way, but in a "do you know what you're saying and can you grasp what it means?" way.

Example of something I don't want censorship on: opinions political or societal systems. In fact I love discussing different ones, what they bring to the table, how they worked in practice and how they are bad so we can tweak them. On fact I invite people to tell me how capitalism itself is awesome, so we can discuss what we feel needs to be part of a healthy society and maybe we come up with novel ideas.

I guess if you wanna say "there's some censorship that's good" I might actually agree but that's way more of a narrow statement than what you're saying here.

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I understand. Are you implying that the majority are in favor of censorship?

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

No, I'm saying that if you agree with the majority then your opinions won't offend the majority. And if your opinions don't offend the majority then the majority won't censor you.

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 3 points 5 hours ago

So any censorship going around isn’t going to touch you.

Censorship isn't ok just because you aren't personally being censored.

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 8 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” —Voltaire (reportedly)

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al -5 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (3 children)

Consider the way we behave on Lemmy. We have moderators, removing posts, banning, and we have downvotes too. And the majority definitely approves of that stuff.

The majority opinion is that if you got censored, banned or heavily downvoted then you deserve it for being bad. Quite the opposite of Voltaire.

[–] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Have you considered that most people like an accurate reflection of how people think about your opinion? They don't want you to shut up, they want you to understand your opinion is unpopular and confront you with that.

There's a big difference between an opinion that's unpopular and an opinion that's actively damaging or inciting. One is worth a discussion, the other is actively stifling discussion in various ways.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Look, another numpty who thinks that moderation in a privately run forum is the same thing as state-sponsored censorship!

Because of course getting banned for not following the house rules is totally the same as getting disappeared for talking bad about the government.

Moderation on a website is to censorship what getting kicked out of someone's house is to deportation.

Being against people getting deported doesn't mean that you think that anyone should be allowed to do whatever they want in the home of other people.

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al -3 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

It's a conversation. Try to engage.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

No, it's not. It's a misconception on the very fundamental level of the concepts we are talking about.

Moderating an online forum and state-sponsored censorship are two wildly different things. The former is in many circumstances legally required while the latter is legally prohibited (in most cases).

Freedom of speech means that the government is not allowed to interfer with your speech (with exceptions). It doesn't mean that everyone has to listen to your bad takes let alone has to host them on their privately owned website.

Who does something matters just as much as what is done. Same as you can't claim that the police is kidnapping you when they arrest you for murdering your neighbour.

These basics are so basic that it is hard to believe you don't understand them. If you really don't understand them, read up on just the very basics of the concept of rule of law and the basic rights one has and how they apply.

It's more likely though that you do understand but just want to argue in bad faith, in which case it is not a conversation either.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

He did, you aren't, thereby exposing your sophistry.

You're uninterested in the truth, just in "winning an argument".

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works -1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, that's true, the majority seems to be for censorship. That's no excuse for you to be, too.

[–] presoak@lazysoci.al -1 points 10 hours ago

The majority likes censorship and dictatorship. It may protest it, but it likes it.

That's something to consider.

[–] disregardable@lemmy.zip 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

If everyone agrees, then censorship doesn't exist at all. Like, it's not censorship that nobody is saying "Humans don't actually need to breathe." Everyone just knows it is wrong, so they don't say that.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

No. There is a thing called a nuanced opinion where just because you agree with some parts of a group doesn't mean you agree with them all.

[–] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Censorship is suspect, not inherently bad.

Freedom of viewpoint expression is a key part of democracy and modern society. But it's not an absolute right of unfettered communication, since that would lead to no recourse when a racist troll projects a deep fake of you raping small children on the side of your house.

Being able to sue someone for libel is censorship. Property rights allowing you to control what happens on your house are censorship. And, yes, the government arresting that hypothetical racist troll for the production of child pornography is also censorship.

Of course, we could just define censorship as "suppression of protected speech" or something similar, but that just hides the game and helps folk who actually want to censor political ideas they don't like get away with it.

[–] Darkcoffee@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

First they came for {minority a} and I said nothing because {me! ≠ minority a}.

I'm sure that's where that poem stops, so you're good!

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

More accurate if you agree with those in power. IE the censoring of say... jokes about the brian thompson killing, well liked by the majority. Not so well liked by the 1%.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

And on Lemmy the 'those in power' that can and will censor you are the mods/admins of whatever community/instance you're on that don't like your politics.

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

and no ones denying the existance of such... Fact is at the end of the day no one actually winds up liking uncensored platforms. First and foremost is obviously spam, advertisements etc.. But assuming just spam is blocked, a zero censorship platforms first wave will be people who's views constantly get them kicked off other platforms. It's not really possible to a have a platform welcoming to literal self identified nazi's, that doesn't quickly become exclusively nazi's.

So yeah lemmy the thing I like about it overall is I think we are all in agreement, the initial showerthought is right.. we generally are only OK with censorship that meets our own views of what should be censored, and lemmy offers the ability for people who disagree, to make their own instance. So you can have anything from tanky friendly to nazi friendly instances.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

I'd rather censorship was entirely client side, but I haven't seen any social media that does that.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 0 points 6 hours ago

That is not censorship.

As someone else pointed out, if I kick you out of my house because I don't like the shit you say that's not censorship or deportation - it's merely me exerting my authority over a space I own.

[–] GreatWhite_Shark_EarthAndBeingsRightsPerson@piefed.social 2 points 11 hours ago

That is an interesting thought experiment, but I would have say no. We all could be wrong, it has happened to me in past. Mass hysteria happens,