this post was submitted on 06 May 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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You only remember the ones where the plot goes totally off the rails, dialogue makes no sense, and acting is just bizarre. Whoever is writing this trash is chronically incapable of producing anything even remotely good. It’s either forgettably mediocre or experimental chaos and pure madness.

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[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 14 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Good thought...

But no, dreams are forgettable because they are built that way: the stuff the brain uses to create memories is disabled during dreams.

This is because, otherwise, you would just keep hallucinating without being able to discern between reality and dreams.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Does that mean that people who lose their ability to reliably form new memories (like anterograde amnesia or Alzheimer's) experience reality like a dream?

[–] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 2 points 4 hours ago

Probably not. When awake, your brain is processing real input from your sensory systems (sight, sound, smell, etc). When dreaming, your brain fabricates those inputs, essentially replaying the neural circuitry from the dark and quiet comfort of your bed. Even without forming long-term memories, reality will still obey the laws of physics and causality but dreams don't have to.

[–] bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works 14 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Haha your dreams just suck

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

😃 Yeah, they sure do. Could be worse though. Haven’t had any nightmares in a long time.

[–] bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

My nightmares are weird. They are not jump-scare/dude with a knife following me fucked up but certain experiences that influence your world view for the worse or such a mindfuck. Combined with elements of trying to wake up from a dream, getting up from bed to get a glass of water, for the dream to continue. Like, in the dream you get out of bed, the mindfucked events still take place, you pince. Eake up in bed, still in dream. Sometimes multiple times in a row. Eventually I actually wake up in the real world and the experience fucks with me for 2 hours. I am really lucid in my dreams so the difference between dream and reality is really foggy when I just wake up. You learn to live with it.

I also suffered from sleep paralysis for very long but haven't experienced in a long time.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 7 hours ago

Dreams feel surprisingly normal and real, and I think that has something to do with the way your mind works while dreaming. At least I seem to lose my control of emotions, which can result in violent outbursts, and other types of uncharacteristic behavior. Also, my critical thinking abilities are mostly gone while dreaming, so I’ll just go with the flow and fail to realize how wrong everything is.

I’ve also had a few crossover dreams like the one you mentioned, but those only happen if I’m in very light sleep. If my dreams involve a false wake up, it’s because I’m aware that I need to get up. Normally, that level of awareness is disabled or otherwise unavailable. Probably doing some sort of defragging, updating and maintenance in the background.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

My dreams/nightmares can be heavy plot based. Nightmares feel like silent hill. Sometimes im just watching tv in a dream. I normally get 4-5 episodes deep into the best f$#@ing show I ever watched only to wake up. Barely remember plot just feeling pumped but sad ill never finish.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 hours ago

I can’t wait for the day when you can record dreams at home, and replay them when you’re awake. That would be so cool.

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 16 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Hard disagree, at least wrt my own dreams.

I often remember them right after I wake up, but they tend to float away pretty fast. Trick: write them down immediately. You might be surprised how good some of them actually are.

And from time to time I have dreams that stay with me, for days, even if I didn't write them down.

I know artists that use their dreams, one singer basically just recites them. It's amazing.

[–] avattar@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 9 hours ago

I have sometimes written down dreams, and then looking at what I wrote days later, it's just crazy stuff that makes little sense.

[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 2 points 8 hours ago

But they are immersive

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

There's a common dream among gun nuts, where you squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the trigger, but the gun never fires.

It has to do with how we are often taught to shoot. If you anticipate the recoil, you tend to push the gun forward, the muzzle drops, and you miss your target. To counter that, you're taught to slowly squeeze the trigger while you aim, and let the shot surprise you. By the time you recognize the gun has fired, the bullet has already passed through your target.

In the dream, you're squeezing harder and harder and harder, waiting for a bang that is never going to come.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago

That’s a familiar feeling. In my dreams, things tend to be wrong somehow. You’re expecting something to happen, but that’s not how it works in dreams.

In some cases, the exact opposite happens. You just go with the weird flow, and don’t even realize how wrong everything is. When you wake up, you wonder how you didn’t notice anything odd at the time. While dreaming, you’re so familiar with the unusual rules of the game that even the strangest things don’t make you bat an eyelid.

[–] bizarroland@lemmy.world 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I have friends who have dreams about going to work.

I have friends who have dreams about showing up to a hangout and hanging out with people.

I dream about leading a choir of nuns on a singing rampage through New York and fighting epic space battles where it turns out that the Darth Vader equivalent of my dream is actually my cousin, which I only learn after I kill him, where priceless and irreplaceable books on witchcraft are destroyed to make wrapping paper due to a shopkeeper's error, where I am told mysteries of the universe and song and hear songs that have never been sung before.

Dreams are like your brain's way of processing information and defragging your personality.

Everyone's got different kinds of dreams.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 3 points 11 hours ago

LOL. That was pretty wild. Sounds like your dreams are like a massive blender for random ideas.

My dreams tend to be a bit like that… at least the ones I can remember. Some random stuff always happens for no apparent reasons, and people react in all the wrong ways.

[–] RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

It's what your brain is thinking about during your rest state. If your dreams are frantic, frighting, memorable; you're not resting. If your dreams are forgettable, not troubling, you're probably resting well.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 11 hours ago

Well that’s good news.

When I do remember my dreams, they tend to be bizarre, not troubling. However, occasionally dreams do contain stuff I’m worried about. About 10 years ago, I had a very thin phablet, and I was worried about bending it accidentally. Those thoughts also started creeping into my dreams, which certainly didn’t help that sort of thinking.

[–] Mk23simp@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

I think there's something deeper to not being able to remember them, like the brain not writing memories of them or something. Then again, my memory is particularly bad and some aspects of it are completely non-functional, so that could explain my experience.

[–] avattar@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 9 hours ago

Maybe the dream is like the loading screen while the brain is busy saving data, so it can't save that too.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 hours ago

Maybe my brain goes like: “Nope! Not writing that down. You’re better off not remembering low quality clown vomit like this. We have at least some stands around here.“

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 0 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 4 points 8 hours ago

Yeah, I get the feeling the processes might be similar. At least they both produce really weird nonsense that sort of looks real as long as you don’t look too closely.