this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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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 best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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In part because it reminds me a bit of the old internet, with stuff being spread around everywhere.

Being "harder"* to understand than reddit, twitter or other big companies' services is also a good thing, because people should remember that they have a brain and they should use it.

  • "harder" because not everyone understands the fediverse right away, since usability is extremely similar

PS: ^superscript doesn't work with phrases? at least not on preview^

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As a soon to be 30 yr old this reminds me of the internet I grew up loving lol, feels just the right amount of old school to me

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When I see the notifications popup in the top right corner, it surprisingly reminds me of old FB. Back when instead of an app buzzing in my pocket 24/7 with notifications that are actually just ads or BS, I intentionally choose to log on, see the notification, and think "Oh, someone interacted with me, let's go see what they said."

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Oh man, I never thought about that, but you're 100% right. I've had this nagging feeling of nostalgia while using Lemmy for the longest time, and that's exactly what it is.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s beautiful and I hope the rest of the internet has a revolution like this.

Idk much about servers or anything but I hope someone finds a good way to replace YouTube next

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

That'd be PeerTube, but federated video is hard. It's very expensive in terms of bandwidth and storage. In comparison, hosting a mostly text-based website with very little embedding of images and no embedding of video and sharing it with the world is relatively easy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yes! At first I wasn't too keen about that, but it's actually more freeing this way. I get to choose when to notice a notification, not the other way around

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like that the rough edges keep the boomers away. That's the point where I know to move on from a social media site.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used the old site for more than a decade, and I remember when the highest upvoted posts on the frontpage had only 2K upvotes. Lemmy is at that point now and its future is full of potential.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When I first joined the old site, the top post all time was the one about the guy trying different things with rice (either that or the guy posing with asscracks at an MTG grand prix)

Reddit 0/10

Lemmy with rice 10/10

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Oh man I remember the asscracks guy, that's gotta be like ten years ago now?

It's a bit of a shame the no-poop guy is no longer the top post on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm loving the community feel of it, everyone seems to be here because they want to be here rather than just cus it's where everyone else is

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Glad to have you around here!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I'm here because I want to be on Reddit, but the Reddit I want to be on doesn't exist anymore.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (6 children)

It's definitely forced me to learn a lot within the past few days. I guess I should thank reddit, because if they hadn't forced the 3rd party apps out of business I wouldn't have ever heard of Lemmy or kbin.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Late 90's, early 2000's internet was fun. It was the wild west.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I still miss altavista, ska the fun with IRC. Good times.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

If you've used Gopher nothing else will every scare you again.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I've come to like it more than Reddit at this point. The community feel here you can't buy and can only make it with actual factual care.

The only complaint I have is a minor one, and that's speed and sometimes things don't load. Though I know that's a symptom of growing pains. That will likely be a non-issue in the future as the tech grows with the popularity of the community

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Reminds me of Reddit in 2008 when I joined. Legitimate communities forming and finding their way. Wasn't super intuitive how to use or what to do, but something special.

Reddit has since just transformed into something almost unrecognizable, but its tough to beat the size and reach it's built.

On thing Lemmy is going to have to worry about is bots. I'm hoping the decentralization is a good solution to both monetization and bots. We shall see.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hey, the speed issue is solely because the instance you're on, Lemmy.world, is way overcrowded. You can resolve this issue by joining a smaller instance or even hosting your own. The best part of Lemmy is you aren't tied to any one server. You can create an account on a different instance/site and never miss a Lemmy post. I'm on my own private instance and have zero issues with loading speed

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

That sounds very doable. I'll have to look for a tutorial and work on that next chance that I get.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do I transfer my subscriptions to another server, though? Do you really just have to re-sub to everything all over again?

Because I have so many subs now…

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes that's an annoyance but I would expect support for that in the medium term.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I made an account on a separate server just to test and it does indeed perform tons better. Just sucks there isn’t some way to “own” your user and download like a fingerprint of it on demand from a server, so you could easily transfer yourself somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Unpopular opinion: it should stay a little bit slow. Every other commercialized platform trains us for immediate gratification.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh ya buddy? Well change is scary for me and I've been cowering in a corner. This jerboa app seems yo sort of be working tbo.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For me lemmy is pretty much impossible to browse without jerboa, the oficial site has a very clunky UI and jerboa solves that problem. Thankfully third-party applications aren't going extinct here

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Also forces me to learn more about the Fediverse, third party apps, hosting my own Lemmy instance, etc which I always appreciate

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

reddit also started out rough around the edges too!

I like when things take more time to build but it's far more of a collaborative effort. It makes me much more invested and devoted to the platform's success!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I Just have to say that I am seeing much more success with my posts and comments than ever on Reddit

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I want Lemmy to grow but it's a lot of fun right now because the people that took the time to figure this out all genuinely want to be here and have a sense of community.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is what genuine grass root communities look like. Compare that to crypto and NFTs which had insane amount of VC funding to pretend to be grass roots.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Crypto and NFTs are money-laundering scams with a lot of technobabble thrown in to hide the truth from normies. I knew it was a scam when one of my friends, who is a smart guy but not a tech guy, bought into BTC because he thought it was clearly the future. I think he made money on his first BTC, and I’m pretty sure he lost on his second and third BTC, and I feel terrible for him because it was with some of his retirement. He’s going to have to work a trade job for years longer than if he’d just put that same money in an index fund, because he got sucked in by the allure of crypto.

I’m not huge on governmental regulation of people’s decisions with their money, but I have a personal rule. If you can’t explain it in a sentence to the average 10 year old or they understand it and it sounds like it should be illegal to said ten year old, it’s not a good idea. It’s easy to explain how a basic investment in a company that makes physical goods can be profitable. Try to explain NFTs to a fifth grader without using words like “profit from nothing” and see what they think.

If the stock market is already artificially high for a few reasons, crypto and NFTs were/are even a step higher in artificial pricing and being a tool for rich people to get richer and hide their money from the few governments powerful enough to dare tax them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the original Bitcoin proposition had some merit in introducing a new concept and a new type of trustless economy. However probelms in scaling the PoW mechanism and transaction fees make it infeasible for daily use.

99.9% of the other stuff? Never understood why people see value in NFTs. Especially given that they mostly link to image files on someones web server that would point to a 404 page if taken offline.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

My main complaint with crypto is not the underlying idea of a digital currency, is that people used it as a straight investment like it was a normal stock, they traded it like it was a different currency without understanding currency trading fundamentals, or they used it as a hedge against the USD/Pound/Euro collapsing as though that would gain without taking down the complete grid which is how crypto transactions get tracked against the public ledger. Yes, P2P crypto rejections are possible, but in a collapse scenario they’re effectively useless, even more so than gold and silver, and I’m a big believer that the only true precious metals in a grid down scenario are lead, steel, and brass in the forms of tools and weapons to defend communities.

Gold has value as a transaction medium in some scenarios, but they depend on being able to accurately assay the quality and weight, neither of which lend themselves to quick transactions in small purchases. It’s also super heavy, and since the mined coins are a full or half ounce, in a collapse scenario they’re too valuable for little things, which means massively overpaying and therefore spending the hedge at an accelerated rate.

[–] ICastFist 6 points 1 year ago

Fuck those crypto shills. I've fallen for their bait back in '16 and 17. I learned the hard way that it's grifts on top of grifts all the way down

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Imagine if back in the day all the PHPBB forums were federated

[–] ICastFist 8 points 1 year ago

Reddit would never come to exist in that case, I think. MySpace and Facebook would probably've had a harder time growing. The sheer amount of php forums over the net was mind blowing.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Tbh I was spoiled for ten years and I have to get over that. It's definitely an adjustment coming to Lemmy, but I'm having fun.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I remember being surprised when anybody in the media knew what reddit was. This was only 5 years or so ago. I felt happy at that time, but didn't realize that was the jump the shark moment for reddit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I totally agree. Gives me something new to learn which I always appreciate.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Agreed 100%. There was definitely a barrier to entry in the internet’s early days which is why it was so nice. People that were there had to learn because they WANTED to be there and make it something great.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh, I have mixed feelings about how the Fediverse welcomes people by not really explaining how the whole thing works, but people have found their way around in no time at all.

It's definitely a growing platform, but there are rough edges in the usability of it aside on desktop and mobile, and in many third-party apps like Jerboa.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I'm sad to hear you did not feel like a good explanation of the fediverse was given. Is there something you'd still want to know? I'm no expert but I've been here for a while, so I might be able to help or at least guide you!

Feel free to ask! And if you don't feel like commenting on here, feel free to DM me with questions too.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Also, the usernames are amazing. Since there are so many available people choose the most random stuff

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Agreed, I’m getting nostalgic feelings for slashdot, digg, and old Reddit.

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