this post was submitted on 29 Jul 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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I feel like the people I interact with irl don't even know how to boot from a USB. People here probably know how to do some form of coding or at least navigate a directory through the command line. Stg I would bet money on the average person not even being able to create a Lemmy account without assistance.

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[–] carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 347 points 1 week ago (66 children)

The average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate, not less. The era of growing up with a home computer that required fiddling and dial up, etc is over. People grow up with phones and iPads and kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.

[–] DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world 108 points 1 week ago (5 children)

And for that reason alone I built a Linux PC for my 11 year old and told him to go to town figuring things out. (I supervise everything of course). Dude has been doing fantastic so far.

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 71 points 1 week ago (5 children)

If he doesn't solve problems with chmod 777 then he's already more competent than the ops teams at my fortune 500 company

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Who's going to win?

SELinux+Seccomp+Containers...
Or the sysadmin with sudo and chmod.

Neither! It's whichever script kiddie gets lucky first.

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[–] NikolaTeslasPigeon@lemmy.world 42 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I grew up starting my computer use having to navigate DOS just before windows 3.11 was released. I work in tech today and I feel like just knowing about a lot of the automated things we take for granted today has given me a little bit of an edge.

[–] griff@lemmings.world 27 points 1 week ago (11 children)

I had to walk to school in the snow ten miles, both ways uphill!

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[–] cryptTurtle@piefed.social 34 points 1 week ago (2 children)

So a friend of mine went to a convention to show off his gaming project. The kids there were trying to touch the monitors to play the game. They didn't grab the keyboard and mouse. They didn't touch the controller. They touched the monitor. People's framework of what a computer is and what it's made of is completely different than what it use to be

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[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

Hate to say it, but that technical literacy from having to operate computers the difficult way was a small blip in history. So things are just kind of going back to "normal."

Now, the only real natural entry into "computing" is gaming. Pretty much everything else has to come through formal education, which is largely myopic and boring.

Don't think I've even worked with a gen Z engineer yet. I assume they exist.

[–] Know_not_Scotty_does@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

I have worked with a few gen z interns/fresh grads, and some younger millennials (I am a 1990 kid) and its interesting... Some of them have been very successful at passing the tests but have no mechanical aptitude at all. Some have been technically literate on first glance, then proven to be just confidently incorrect. In general though, it seems they just didn't grow up being interested in how things worked like I did. It could be isolated to my small sample size or it could be a general trend. They also don't seem to make connections across disciplines as easily either but again, that could just be a time in service thing at this point and not a generational trait.

I have not been super impressed with the new ones we get when we get them, some of them have been quick learners though and have impressed me with their adaptability. I am a huge proponent of proper mentorships or rotational programs and that is something that seems to get overlooked with younger grads in my experience.

One thing that really annoys me though, is that when prompted with something they don't know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don't know. Saying I don't know is a completly acceptable answer as long as it is followed up with "but I will find out" or "can you help/explain it". Falling back to a first principle approach and talking through it is also valid but just making up some shit doesnt fly with me.

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[–] RedIce25@lemmy.world 125 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Something that amazes me that I often see is tech literate people wastly over estimating the tech literacy of an average person. Any amount of tech support would tell you that most people barley know the basics and doesn't care for anything else.

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 124 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's easy to forget the average person probably only knows terminal commands for Debian. And Fedora, of course.

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[–] kopasz7@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 week ago (8 children)

The curse of knowledge; makes you lose the perspective of the average man in the field of your expertise.

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[–] waitaminute@midwest.social 78 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Not me. I am so out of the loop here. But I loved the social aspect of reddit and was on it long enough to know how great it was when it was young. Hoping to find that here.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 57 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (12 children)

Honestly, Lemmy does have a lot of the early Reddit vibes. Reddit was largely started as a programming forum, and this user base definitely has a lot of similar traits.

And if you start using user tags, (not native to Lemmy, but most clients have the functionality added,) you’ll realize just how active users are, and how tight-knit the comments sections really are. I often end up finding myself responding to the same 10-20 users.

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[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 77 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Linux is second nature to us geeks, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably knows just Ubuntu or Fedora.

And Debian GNU/Linux, of course.

[–] Jobe@feddit.org 49 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wait is this already in reference to the xkcd about experts overestimating the average person's knowledge about their subject or should I go look for it?

[–] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 35 points 1 week ago

It absolutely sounds like a reference to the xkcd.

[–] ArrowMax@feddit.org 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Webcomics are second nature to us geeks, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably knows just ADHDinos and Loving Reaper.

And xkcd, of course.

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[–] Vrijgezelopkamers@lemmy.world 66 points 1 week ago (6 children)

I can’t do any of the stuff you mentioned. I’m here because I hate traditional social media that are not social at all. And I hate ads. And have an interest in community driven stuff and DIY.

And I don’t feel like I am alone here.

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[–] lucullus@discuss.tchncs.de 56 points 1 week ago (22 children)

Relevant xkcd: Average familiarity

You severly overestimate the average persons tech literacy even when you try to correct for it. Booting from USB is already a really advanced topic.

Though creating a lemmy account is not that complex. Typically all you have to do is fill out a form on the websiten instructions included. The problem there is not the tech literacyn but the willingness of the people to even interact with systems they don't know, like finding a home instance or understanding the concept of the fediverse. Most people could create a lemmy account, though also most people wouldn't.

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[–] iridebikes@lemmy.world 50 points 1 week ago (5 children)

The average person can't even download the right authenticator app when prompted. The average person can't type their password the same way two times in a password change field. The average person does not know how to plug monitors and peripherals into a docking station.

Whatever you think the average skill level is? It's lower than that. By a lot.

[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I work electronics in walmart and you would be shocked at the questions I get on things like laptops from collage age kids. A very frequent one is 'if it isn't touchscreen then how do you work it'. One of my favorite ever was a girl who went down the line asking can you type on them because i need to be able to type. Every time I told her you can type on all laptops but she just kept asking.

I know a huge part of it is some kind of 'location bias' because the kids who know something about computers are shopping online or at microcenter or something.

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[–] happydoors@lemmy.world 39 points 1 week ago (16 children)

You are completely correct and their comments prove it. The bubble is strong here. But it’s a pretty nice bubble

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[–] Nangijala 38 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Don't worry, my fair tech-literate maiden. I, a tech-dyslexic, am here to bring down the collective IQ and make the chamber echo less. You can thank me later, for adding some much needed intellectual diversity to the mix.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

*with strong beliefs on random topics

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 21 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I'll die on the veganism hill. I don't care. I'll take as many of y'all with me as I can.

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[–] BenVimes@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 week ago (6 children)

My own experience, as someone who is not necessarily tech illiterate, but also not an expert either:

I decided to check out some basic Linux stuff, and found a post directing newcomers to a website that was supposed to be a top-notch beginner's guide. This guide started with a history of Linux, written in the style of an early 2000s GameFAQs guide. It then jumped immediately into selecting a distro, and started describing each option with terms like "lightweight"and "robust" without explaining what those terms meant in that context - or even defining what a distro was in the first place.

As someone who has used Windows for around 3 decades, I could make some inferences to fill in the gaps. But I imagine someone with less experience with PCs would get completely lost.

Now on the flip side, I've also shared in another thread the story of how I lost interest in programming partway through my introductory university course, and mostly received positive feedback. The folks in that thread seemed happy to hear the perspective of an outsider.

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[–] ConstantPain@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago

Not my fault. Reddit pushed me here!

[–] webpack@ani.social 27 points 1 week ago (3 children)

makes sense, since Linux users (me) are drawn to foss projects like moths to a light

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[–] McDropout@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I am not tech literate but here I am.

imposter

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[–] CtrlAltDefeat@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Anonymity and the general public do not mix. Barrier to entry is all we have left.

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[–] glitchdx@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Why would normal people know how to boot from usb? Shit, if you clean the ads out of a windows start menu, a normie will think you're a wizard for doing the inconceivable.

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

The average person nowadays could not create and reliably access a Facebook account if they didn't have auto complete/password save.

The worst is twenty-year-olds that have never used a desktop. They just stare at the mouse, keyboard, and monitor like they have no clue what to do.

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[–] Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I don't think it's an echo chamber, I think you are wrong about that. The proof is that I am disagreeing with you right now. Therefore, not an echo chamber.

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