this post was submitted on 09 Mar 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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[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The most common first name in the world is Mohammad. The most common surname name in the world is Wong.

Thus, logically, the most normal person on Earth must be named Mohammad Wong.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Me trying to work out the pun over here squinting my eyes and clocking my head. Got nothing.

It's really a statistics joke. If you assume both observations are independent, then yes, the most average name might be "Mohammad Wong." But if there are other confounding factors, such as the mapping of names to ethnic groups, then the whole thing falls apart. Obviously Mohammad Wong is not the most common name on the planet.

[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I kind of think normal people don’t even exist. Everyone is weird in their own way. What we call normal is just the average of all these uniquely strange individuals - but that kind of person may be nothing more than an abstraction, like saying the average family has 2.5 children.

We assume we’re not normal because we know ourselves in far greater depth than we know others. But we call them normal because, from the outside, that’s how they seem to us. Yet, in the same way, there are people who look at us and see normal.

[–] Zachariah@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Everyone is normal.
But at least half of us are not average.

[–] lordnikon@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If everyone is normal then noone is normal and that's okay

[–] jaycifer@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

One of the most important things I heard in middle school was from a friend of a friend: "It's normal to be weird and it's weird to be normal. Have you ever met someone who was truly 'normal?'"

[–] Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago

Shout out to all the abnormal people that don’t consider themselves abnormal.

[–] DaddysLittleSlut@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I think it’s much more considerable to look at it from this. Another user already somewhat brought this up (Thanks Jay). To be weird is normal but most people try and act more normal for social acceptance. Though being normal is actually more weird. Then alongside this. There is so weird or different that it’s like huh? I’m in this last section.

[–] annette_runner@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

No one is looking at me and thinking “normal” lol

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Same. People look at me all the time for some reason, although who the fuck knows why.

[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Honestly, I would. In my opinion, if it exists, then it is normal.

Even what we perceive as shitty/horrid/weird/unorthodox is entirely normal, as everything is part of a deeply complex causal system. We may not fully grasp the tapestry of ramifications which lead to said causal normalcy, but, again, if it weren't normal, it wouldn't exist (to further entangle this, nothingness itself thus becomes normal).

Everything beyond that is our biased perception which births opinions. Nothing more. This is not to say that our opinions don't matter, as some aspects are more constructive than others (eg. honesty vs. deception, life vs. death, etc., and even these can switch places in the right context) and we have the power to act upon our opinions and directly influence the system of causality within which we exist, which we should do as often and as sincerely as possible.

[–] annette_runner@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

It’s just a joke, like saying you have a great face for radio.

[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

It's also further proof that I absolutely suck at identifying jokes:))

I apologise if I came off as too "dime store philosopher," this whole normalcy thing has deep roots in my conception. I've seen so many people haunted by the feeling of being abnormal (myself included, ngl), that it's become a sort of a nurturing instinct to try to dispel it as much and as often as I can.

[–] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

[Correction: the use as "typical or common" predates its use in math. https://www.etymonline.com/word/normal]

"Normal" is first and foremost a mathematical concept. And so by definition, everything can not all be normal

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

Respectfully disagree, our interpretation of mathematics is secondary to the entirety of existence. "Normal" is most definitely not exclusive to mathematics, and thus, in this context, entirely unrelated.

[–] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Please see updated comment

[–] thenextguy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I normally don't consider myself at all.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

I don't consider at all.

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I thought about it for a second, and my mental idea of what a normal person is is like some black and white nuclear family, white dad with slick back hair and a sweater and a pipe in his mouth, and wife wearing a gingham dress, cooking food and cleaning with her hair in an updo.

If that is what normal is, there's only ever been one family that was actually normal, and they are all dead now.

[–] thanatotus@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Which family was it?

the big leap from high school was realizing nobody has the normal life.

[–] DarkMetatron@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago

Normal people doesn't exist, because people is a way to broad term to perform any kind of normalisation.