this post was submitted on 26 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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Funny how we see the world in landscape, but live it mostly in portrait. (feddit.org)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Not really a shower thought, I came to this perspective in my dreams. And yes, that night's sleep absolutely slapped.

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[–] ddash 30 points 1 month ago

Strong Jayden Smith vibes here

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Actually, we see the world in

correct diagram of human visual field

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

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

I'm not sure what you mean with "live mostly in portrait". Can you give an example?

[+] [email protected] -7 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Poah, ok let's do this:

reading a book
interacting with your smartphone
using the fridge
standing in an elevator
street signs
restaurant menus
tapping someone on the shoulder (vertical not horizontal interaction)
looking at paintings
standing in line
observing a statue
interacting with your closet
looking someone up and down
etc, etc, etc

Just some I could come up with on the fly

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago

a spectacularly healthy dose of cherry-picking with this one.

what about watching movies at the cinema? playing video games on the tv? train carriages? the back seat of a car? double beds? panoramas? the horizon? a computer's qwerty keyboard? side-by-side boobs? side-by-side arms? the ending shootout of the good, the bad, the ugly? thw viewscreen of the starship enterprise? car windscreens? baby got back? landscape paintings?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Most of those are quite specific actions and they don't really add up to "most of our lives".

For example I spend at least 8hours watching on landscape-screen at work (and a couple more observing at home). Reading books, menues, using the fridge, riding elevators or observing statues doesn't really add up to anything close to that.

Also some examples are a big confusing. Street signs are usually round, square or ... landscape. Generally when in traffic you'll be observing everything in landscape. Or how is standing in-line a portait action?

I think most people (at least me) are mostly living in landscape.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Really, this argument you're both having ignores the greater mystery.

What the fuck is humans obsession with right angles?

They don't represent our actual visual field
They aren't space efficient.
They aren't strong.

Yet we have infused them everything.

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

Simplicity, is the short answer. Euclidean shapes are easy to conceptualize and reproduce, and rectangles are among the simplest of them

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

Text in a book is horizontal, also an opened book is most often wider than tall - so it's in landscape too. It's only in portrait when it's closed so it'll take up less space on the shelf - which is also horizontal.

You can use smartphone in landscape too, but it's not as convenient to hold, and read text. But for watching video, you bet I'll rotate it to landscape.

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

Text in a book is horizontal

on your phone too, but it is still in a vertical rectangle of view

also an opened book is most often wider than tall

but most often you are only observing a single page, don't you?

I think OP's point is not about the shape or layout of things, but the "rectangle of view" or "bounding box" or whatever.

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

You're only observing a single page, which is taller than wide, but you're also only observing a single word, which is generally wider than tall.

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

Open a picture on your cell phone. Any portrait picture. Now look at it. Do your eyes focus on the whole picture? No, you focus on a portion of it at a time. It doesn't matter that the orientation is vertical, the frame of your focus is the same no matter what you look at.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

It's an interesting observation. We observe the world in landscape because our eyes are positioned to give us a goid balance between binocular vision and seeing predators in our peripheral vision, but most of our interactions are portrait, I suspect due to our upright posture. Most of the instances you mentioned are with things that either are, or are evolutiobs if things that were, designed around the fact we are talker than we are wide.

It would be interesting to observe whether animals with a different posture interact differently.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Alright, I go to work, my house and playing football.

All these things are in landscape. I know my shower is in portrait, which makes this post oddly good in this sub, but the rest of my rooms are also wider than tall.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago

Yes - but have you been on your smartphone lately? Have you read a book? Looked in the mirror? Interacted with your vertical (hopefully not too horizontal) girlfriend / boyfriend? Sometimes I feel like the human eye is too limited upwards / downwards.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what you mean with "live mostly in portrait". Can you give an example?

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

Certainly.
I've hidden lots of cameras around your house and the screens that I use to watch you are in portrait configuration.
Hope that helps. Also, you're running low on shampoo.