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:
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.
The static on old CRT TVs with rabbit ears was the cosmic microwave background. No one in the last 25 years has ever seen it.
They haven't?
I have a TV from ~2010 that still gives me static when something isn't connected.
People born after 2000 can see it on their phones, much more clearly:
My grandpa always just called it "The ant races"
I saw on 'how it's made' a conveyer belt of a bunch of apples and it reminded me of the TV static the way they all rolled around forming random structures like a crystal. From then on I always think of apples on a conveyerbelt when I see static.
Sixth and Seventh Generation video game consoles were still using scart/composite/component outputs for CRT up until their discontinuation in 2017 so I’m pretty sure a lot of kids would have had a CRT to game on as well was watch TV in their rooms.
Remember, kids typically get the hand me downs when the adults get new shiny.
I was born in the 90s, my brothers were born in the early 2000s. We had a CRT into the early 2010s . Maybe people who weren't poor haven't seen real TV static but even then I doubt it. Hell, remember those god awful "flat screen" CRTs? My old station still had one of those that we used to watch TV on in 2018-19. It's probably still there lol
I actually liked the flat screen crts. I have a 1080p flatscreen crt and I love it. Can’t use it though because I’m scared my kids will get crushed by it.
I was born after 2000 (though not too long after) and this is actually one of my core memories. I think about the sounds of the static and the sound of the CRT turning off all the time.
Also, we had a really old tv in our basement till at least 2008 that had no remote, just knobs and I remember messsing with the “hue” dial all the time trying to figure out how it worked.
The only reason that tv worked so late is that we had a black box connected to the antenna which I later learned was converting the digital signal to analog for the TV.
Also, you’ve just reminded me that I remember the switch from analog to digital. Specifically, I remember watching Elmo talking with some adult on TV about the change. Now I really want to find that video. I think the guy was wearing a suit had short dark hair and glasses. I also think the background was pinkish purple. I want to know how accurate my memories from so long ago are. (I’ll add the link to the video in an edit if I can find it)
Edit: I cannot find the video :(
Opening line of Neuromancer doesn't make much sense any more "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
You can still hear it on the radio. Although most of the noise floor is probably man made.
Many likely haven't seen a channel sign off for the night with a test pattern up til they come back on
Also, a lot of kids don't have the slightest idea of what the "save" icon in their apps represents. They just know it's the save icon because it's everywhere
To be fair though, many kids nowadays have never seen a save icon as autosave is now practically everywhere. For example take anything on an iPad or other touch device.
DAE remember that movie White Noise? The climax was fucking horrifying and I have to admit that it haunted me for quite a while.
For better or worse, kids today probably won't get it.
You mean the attack of the ants?
Movies depicting this haven't vanished from existence though
The trope of video/audio breaking down into static is an easy shorthand that is unlikely to be forgotten, probably even well after all the devices capable of doing so have long since been buried in the landfill.
It's especially hilarious in media depicting the far-flung future, where apparently all technologically advanced space men and their communications devices -- not to mention high powered central supercomputers and so on and so forth -- somehow still work over NTSC television signals. Even by the early 1980's it should have been entirely predictable that in "the future" anything like that would be digital, considering we already had widespread digital audio media (CD's), and digital video was already making inroads into the computing industry.
I have seen this on a much newer TV last year. It didnt just disappear
Maybe not directly on their TV set, but there are more than enough references to it in TV and film media that it's still known almost universally.
Everything from old beloved films to Modern period shows. Its literally an overused way to establish the narrative isnt taking place in the present.
As person born after 2000, I used to play a lot of games on them Wii and GameCube mainly. The image and responsiveness really felt different. I do kinda miss them