And so it goes for all of history
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
251 points (98.8% liked)
Showerthoughts
37569 readers
572 users here now
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
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- 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
- Posts must be original/unique
- 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.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I mean, I haven't been alive for all of history unless the self-centered universe is a thing.
I was thinking more along the lines of someone in 1810 thinking the same thing you think about the internet for, like the French Revolution
I have a bookmark made by the band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum that was sneakily tucked into my merch haul last time I saw them live, and it has a quote on it that I will need to wait until I get home to properly remember, and I also want to do more diligence to figure out if it is an actual quote. At the top it says "A WARNING ABOUT READING", and the quote says something like:
Beware the written language, man was never destined to record their every thought. How will we continue to remember ourselves when we are now able to cast our essence into this new medium, to remove the memories from ourselves so that we are wrought into perpetual forgetfulness?
-Allegedly some ancient guy from the dawn of books
holy smokes it's been a while since i heard someone mention sleepytime gorilla museum
Still doin' their thing, they released a new album last year! They went on a small new-album tour and that's when I was able to catch their show.
I found the source of the quote on the bookmark, and it was a quote by Plato out of Phaedrus so it definitely is real lol. It's somewhat different on the bookmark, but depending on what translation you look at the quote will probably be slightly different anyway. It's sections 274e to 275b
But when he came to writing, Theuth said, “This branch of learning, O King, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories, for I have discovered an elixir of both memory and wisdom.” The king replied, “Oh most ingenious Theuth, one man is able to invent these skills, but a different person is capable of judging their benefit or harm to those who will use them. And you, as the father of writing, on account of your positive attitude, are now saying that it does the opposite of what it is able to do. This subject will engender forgetfulness in the souls of those who learn it, for they will not make use of memory. Because of their faith in writing, they will be reminded externally by means of unfamiliar marks, and not from within themselves by means of themselves. So, you have discovered an elixir not of memory but of reminding. You will provide the students with a semblance of wisdom, not true wisdom. For having heard a great deal without any teaching they will seem to be extremely knowledgeable, when for the most part they are ignorant, and are difficult people to be with because they have attained a seeming wisdom without being wise.”
only for the intellectually diverse
?
Now that's a new interesting insult 😁
I deal with Junior devs that don’t even actually understand how it works now. Much less how it worked in the 90s. Routing is sysops, HTML is designers, storage is for DBAs. All they learn in coding boot camp is how react works, and even then, they don’t actually understand what it’s doing.
Unfortunately this is inevitable since it all has gotten really complex and large - not just the internet btw, just computing in general, of which the internet is a large part of course.
But teaching the basics and the history should be required imho.
So for an old fart like me, C/C++, netcode and multi threading senior, it's all over?
So I've always felt this way about video games.
Can you imagine a kids first Mario game being Mario Wonder? That's a twist on Mario games, it's not the base Mario!? They won't understand what makes it an interesting new game!
But the thing is, it's fine. Everything new is old. Plus it's the Internet, it's impossible to actually sort out everything.
Like, what is Roblox? I know it's some online game. Then I saw John Green play Roblox with his daughter. It was a dress up simulator. That's Roblox?
Or how about the song Gangnam Style? I remember when that reached 1 billion views on YouTube. That was a moment. But then remember Despacito? When I first heard that song it was already at 1.2 billion views. How could I clearly remember the first billion views video, but completely miss it happening again?
Think about the entirety of history that happened before you. How did you sort that out?
We have ai now. It will explain.
Lol
"The internet was invented by Francis P. Mueller when an apple hit him straight in the dick..."
I'm pretty sure it was Al Gore who invented the Internet.
And if we say it enough, the AI will make it true.
No Al Gore invented Al, that's why it's called Al duh
No AI Gore invented AI, that’s why it’s called AI duh
Just testing something.
I have my font set to Atkinson Hyperlegible, so the lowercase L has a little tail to differentiate it from the capital i, which has its serifs... but in the quote block, the font isn't enforced for some reason so I had to copy/paste it into this textbox to even see what letter that was.
Interesting stuff that I would have never noticed or thought about otherwise...
The internet is a testament to the power of applied interpretive dance; it wouldn't be anything like it is today without those Al Gore Rhythms!
But what about Friedrich Gustav Carl Emil von Internet and his contributions in 1784?
After Kony 2024 anything is possible.
Are you sure?
Oh sorry about that, it was invented by Francis Bacon when a wheelbarrow hit him in the chin.
The way things are going, physical media will be a thing of the past, from records to DVDs to Video game cartridges, our entire existence has revolved around physical media, but people went without for thousands of years before us, and people will go without after us. We are a very unique blip in history.
I was explaining to my kid what a cassette was, and then I realized that I had to explain what physical media was first. Like, no, movies and music didn't always just materialize out of the magic light-box.
Also had to explain to a nephew what the save icon was. That was funny.
The mediaiferous epoch.
I get the basic gist, but can you elaborate on this please:
it's crazy to think any of the newer generations will be able to sort it all out for themselves.
Sort what out? Learn the history of the internet? Why wouldn't they?
A lot has happened. A lot you can never experience again. All things that teach you about the nature of a giant network like this. The types of groups that form. The types of culture. Things to watch out for. Things to question.
As another pointed out, some will come to understand but most will just tend to believe this iteration of the internet is how it's always been.
You're just describing reality. Certainly not specific to the internet.
I feel like there's a crazy number of people who have disassociated from clear pictures of what reality is. Like most of the people who keep talking about "this timeline", as if this is just some story that is happening to someone else.
I've always taken the "timeline" stuff to be a reference to multiverse theory, a metaphysical concept which suggests that the universe exists on an infinite number of parallel realities which can be split, merged and maybe even jumped between.
I'm often guilty of giving the benefit of the doubt by default though, so you may be right and those people's brains are just cooked.
This is an interesting thought.
Being chronically online does kind of break your perception reality doesn't it?
I think I get what you mean; history will have dates and numbers but little narrative. OTOH this is recent and most people are still alive, and, you know, we have the internet, so write about it in blogs and on social media, lest we forget!
They will learn its history as well as they will learn all other kinds of history. Which means some of them will be really proficient, but most will only know a smidgen of truths and half-truths, because most people don't really care about history.
"Wait, explain how Neopets was Scientology again?"
“What was the purpose of the hamster dance?"
Geocities?
Well, ideally that’s what parents are supposed to help with. But it seems a lot of parents would rather have legislation pushed that make it so they don’t have to actually parent their own fuckin kid.
Narrative...?
Well, you see kiddo, it all started with the Eternal September and it’s been downhill ever since. Also your music is too loud and stay off my lawn.
Legit take me back, modern front facing side of the net is fucking awful
Wadidya say sonny? Yes I do like raisin bran! (First time visiting Amsterdam)
Believe it or not, there used to be a time when companies weren't invading every part of your life with ads.
Ads were 6 minutes of garbage between TV, and between the pages of magazines and newspapers.
People would talk to each other on the phone. No ads. Mark their calanders to get together if they felt like it. No ads. Then actually meet up. Some ads.
Now, when you talk to anyone you know on Facebook? Ads. Any social media? Ads. Opening Google calander? Ads. Twitter? The person you're talking to is an bot /ad. I don't even have to be watching an actual TV show now to be served ads on my TV. Just turning it on gives me an ad.
These ads are from organizations trying to spin you a narrative urging you to give them money. The strategies they use for this are fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Things like: "Don't miss out on that Lububu!" "Make sure to book your tickets for the movie opening next week!" "Make sure to buy this pillow before liberals take it from you."
People now believe these narratives simply because they've been shoved into every aspect of our lives via social media.
These ads, collectively, are not something that ever existed in any society to the amount they do now. So it's absolutley no surprise that the "narrative" these ads are telling us is completely warping people's minds.
People still think Fox News is news. Simply because that's how it's advertised.
I'm not sure that's what they meant, but OK
Exactly what is the “entire narrative of the Internet” and when did it start?
What is there to sort out?
I peg the start around 1994. By then it was a household term, computers and dial up were fast becoming ubiquitous, people were learning to navigate the web, etc.
A lot of people equate 'the internet' with the web, which would be 1989.
Others will point to when they got their first email address, some years before that.
Really though, you should be looking at the beginning of ARPANET, which goes back to 1969.
Yeah on all of the above.