this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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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:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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How loud specific things are in comparison to other sounds is one of the things that a director dictates to set the mood for their movie. We all agree that it's gone a bit far with most things nowadays, but having something be piercingly loud or eerily quiet can be used really well, and if everyone from Tommy Teenager to Granny Gertrude can alter these settings with a TV remote and zero knowledge on maybe what they're even doing ("I thought I was changing the volume and now the people don't talk anymore!") it would greatly diminish the director's ability to control that.
If a director's vision involves either potentially disturbing neighbours or not being able to understand dialogue, fuck their vision. I'd much rather my devices be controlled by what I want, not anyone else's desires.
And the existence of idiots doesn't mean everything needs to be limited so that the idiots won't screw themselves. We exist in an age where if you don't understand something, you can easily look up information about it. Enshittification might ruin that over time but it hasn't done so yet. And it can be designed in a way that can make it easier to figure out. Don't stick it deep in the settings, make it easy to find in "volume settings" or "audio settings" with preset options that cover common sound system setups. If such a system were common, then plenty of people will learn it and know what's up when grandma's TV only plays the music track very loudly (which actually might be kinda nice if you just have the TV playing for background noise).
Clearly the directors are either making bad choices or choices that only make sense in an actual theater. (In my opinion it's that first thing)
However this is implemented, it wouldn't be the default volume control on the remote - that would stay as-is. I'm thinking an on-screen menu with clear labels or something.
You may be underestimating Granny Gertrude's powers. She will change a setting in a menu you didn't even know existed. /s
In my opinion, most modern movies and the like sound perfectly fine, like you said, when in a theater setting. I have a pretty decent home audio setup, and I enjoy going out to the movies for ones that I think will be fun or interesting. I usually do not have much of a problem hearing dialogue (well, I'm hard at hearing, so at least not more issues than I have hearing real world dialogue) and the only times things seem uncomfortably loud is when it seems to be done artistically.
The problem comes from the fact that most people don't have a "theater setting" at home, and since media is premixed for theatre setups with no way to adjust it, you're left with the worst of both worlds. I think that, rather than passing the buck onto the inexperienced user who might not know how or want to fiddle with audio track settings, studios need to start taking people's actual equipment into consideration when putting out home releases. Most media players give you the option for surround and stereo, but that does not help when the original media file has bad audio mixing from the get-go. If the actual audio tracks were mixed for "theatre" and "home", I think we'd be in a much better place.