this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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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. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 147 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I skipped those, but I’m about to ruin whatever new platform my kids get in to.

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 74 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] Redredme@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Your boomer parents? You're 40 something?

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 54 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That would be my age.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 24 points 8 months ago (2 children)

A lot of us are, yeah. Even with young whippersnappers like yourself fizzing around on your electrified skateboards and what have you, I'm pretty sure the average age here on Lemmy is closer to 40 than 30 🤷

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[–] db2@lemmy.world 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

... was written on lemmy 😬

[–] Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Implying we aren't mostly disgruntled boomers here.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 67 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure we're mostly disgruntled Millennials and Gen-X'ers.

Anyhow, it looks like TikTok might finally be heading towards some sort of ban or regulation in the US, so maybe it'll get killed by the Boomers but in a different way.

[–] MiniiCSx@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago

Some genZ here too :) moved from Reddit to Lemmy

[–] Amaltheamannen@lemmy.ml 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Dont forget gen Z tech workers

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[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Nah. If you started skipping trends already you are free. Just use what you like lol

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 15 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Well I happen to like embarrassing my kids so…

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[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 105 points 8 months ago (3 children)

My dad really changed since joining TikTok. Now that's all he talks about. Come look at this, come look at this,...
"But I am busy."
"Oh, come on, it's short."
"Look. See? People love Putin."

For fucks sake... Then he proceeds to loudly curse when he gets yet another account banned for posting some trash.
When I try to talk to him, I am met with "Wait, I just have to finish this video." then later he complains I don't talk with him. ¿?

I mean, it's not just TikTok alone, he uses Facebook, TikTok and VKontakte, but I feel like that had the biggest influence.

[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 48 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

start behind the scene subscribing to anti-putin posts and channels and see he changing opinion lol

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 54 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ask not what you could do for the algorithm. Ask what the algorithm can do for you.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 8 months ago

The future is bright!

[–] Alteon@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

100%. This actually works. Most boomers are not technologically late enough to track subscriptions and such.

There was a YouTube video not a documentary (similar to The Brainwashing of My Dad) where their father went down the rabbithole, but they started subscribing them to better news sources, and eventually to left-leaning news sources, and he did a whole 180°.

Fear is like a drug. It's addictive, and rightwing media sources have cracked the formula on how to get people addicted to it, and it can happen to ANYONE. The uneducated to the well-educated. The only thing that makes you immune to it is critical thinking and empathy - which is why I feel that their next war is on education and masculinity. They are literally trying to perfect the addiction so you can never leave it.

This is part of the reason why education is so insanely important.

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[–] sodalite@slrpnk.net 75 points 8 months ago (4 children)

once the boomers get there and start liking it, that's when you know it's about to reach peak and crash hard. my parents are talking about reddit. case in point.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 80 points 8 months ago (1 children)

In contrast to the others, Reddit decided to kill itself off before most Boomers have even heard of it:-).

[–] sodalite@slrpnk.net 14 points 8 months ago

lol you right

[–] Kabloink@lemm.ee 11 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Hey now, a lot of us boomers are already on Lemmy.

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[–] Sanyanov@lemmy.world 62 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Not before their brains start to rot by using those in the first place

It's scary to see how even the older generation gains reduced attention span, reduced ability to learn and need for instant gratification on this short dopamine machine.

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[–] Nurgle@lemmy.world 55 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

I hate to break it to you my not-so-tech-savvy friend, but boomers on tiktok is not going to destroy tiktok like it did Facebook. The algo will basically only show their content to other boomers and young people will largely be unaware of it.

[–] Spuddlesv2@lemmy.ca 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The same was true of Facebook my not-so-socially-savvy friend. Kids will stop using it once they realise grandma is on there because it is no longer cool.

[–] Nurgle@lemmy.world 23 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Again, Facebook and TikTok operate differently. One is a social network, the other is a short form video platform. A social network is inherently dependent on its users. Did YouTube die when it became widely adopted??

[–] lightnegative@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I don't know if YouTube died per se, but it certainly became enshittified.

Heaps of content creators sold out to advertising interests and degraded their own platform. Not that I blame them really, money always talks

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 47 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Oh don't worry, OP, soon you'll be a cranky old perosn who'll be complaining about whatever social media the young'uns are using and doing your part to "kill" something else by using it

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Promise?

Cause all I want is a platform that isn't shoving ads down your throat; respects privacy; helps you feel connected with peers; and isn't plastered with hate.

I'll be ruining quite a few platforms with those expectations.

[–] Synnr@sopuli.xyz 42 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Facebook was all those things in the beginning.

Reddit was all those things in the beginning.

Twitter was all those things in the beginning.

LinkedIn was all those things in the beginning.

The Internet in general was all those things in the beginning.

I've never used IG/TT but I assume they were all those things in the beginning.

Lemmy will probably be said to be most of those things in the beginning.

With age comes wisdom, which comes once you've seen the pattern happen enough times, which can only come with age.

Sincerely,

One of those old people.

[–] velvetThunder@lemmy.zip 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You can still setup your email server and send / receive emails without adds.

So lets hope that it doesn't end in a single corporate Lemmy instance with its own fork that defederated everything else but has most of the content.

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[–] PatFussy@lemm.ee 46 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (6 children)

Kids think anyone older than 25 are boomers. I would wager that the average age here on Lemmy is ~30. So by default, we are all boomers here.

With that said, follow my onlyfans account for cat news and all things related cats at

OnlyCatFans

[–] blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Expected Rick Roll but was still sad you didn't have an Only fans for cats. That would probably make decent money out of spite.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 40 points 8 months ago (10 children)

“Kill” those platforms just means “I don’t use it”. Petty absurd thing to say considering how huge FB still is.

[–] asyncrosaurus@programming.dev 23 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

considering how huge FB still is.

FB is only huge because they've expanded all over the globe, even providing internet to developing nations to facilitate new user acquisition. In reality they've been bleeding the original Western users that signed up between '04-'10, and growth among new generations flatland a long time ago. There's a reason Meta aggressively expanded to other ventures (or attempt to create platforms) like Instagram, Threads, what's app, VR and metaverse. Metas only chance at sustainable growth and capturing young people is to build or buy platforms young people will use, because it ain't Facebook.

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[–] Misconduct@startrek.website 39 points 8 months ago (1 children)

People of all ages have been on TikTok for years now... Y'all are the ones sounding like boomers lol

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[–] smuuthbrane@sh.itjust.works 24 points 8 months ago (5 children)

But Facebook still exists.

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Yep, it still exists. Like a marionetted corpse waltzing around selling garage sale items and finding lost dogs.

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[–] LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Yeah, but have you seen the state of it recently? It's a shell of its former self

[–] CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Maybe but it's almost a $2trillion dollar company. Might be a shell, but it's popular.

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[–] StereoTrespasser@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Someday kids will understand when the baby boomers were actually born.

Or, I guess OP is a middle-aged person complaining about his elderly parents being on a phone app.

[–] Signtist@lemm.ee 13 points 8 months ago (11 children)

I mean, I'm only 30 and my parents are boomers. They weren't even that old when they had me. - I'd imagine there's plenty of early-20's kids running around with boomer parents.

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[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Same with Reddit! My mother-in-law recently said, "I looked it up on Reddit."

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[–] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Uh oh, you're becoming the generation affixed to social media platforms.

Oh, you'll try to hang on, I'm sure you've got a BlueSky and ZingZang account, probably dabble in Xruddle to stay "cool," but you're whining about dated platforms that most people younger than you are already moving beyond.

Fight. Fight against the dying of the light!

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[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 14 points 8 months ago

If by kill you mean turn into a cesspool of right wing extremist propaganda and incel shit only a boomer could spout and still fuck, then most platforms are already there or pretty close.

[–] Default_Defect@midwest.social 13 points 8 months ago

Never felt the need to join tiktok, my friends and family on it kept sending me links to it that were videos that I had already seen weeks ago somewhere else.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 12 points 8 months ago

To everyone defending the elderly: Have you considered they're not ruining these sites because they're old, but because they're baby boomers specifically?

[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

It's harder for them to kill since the algorithm on TikTok is so strong it isolates the demographics.

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