this post was submitted on 23 Jan 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: 1
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They're really not meaningless though. For one thing, they allow moderators and admins to more easily detect trolls and bad faith actors. And on platforms or with add-ons that allow better tracking of vote history, it allows the user to more efficiently moderate their own experience, should they so choose.
Also, I think you've got to be kind of an asshole to not recognise that a little bit of validation from communities that you participate in is a nice thing to have and that downvotes can hurt to an extent, even if it's not the same as getting physically slapped. And to be clear, I'm not pointing at you or anyone, I'm just riffing here. I haven't even seen downvotes for a while now.
So yeah, I'd say they're meaningless in a video game sense. You're not going to win any prizes with them. But there's a reason they exist, plus no one is immune to the effects of positive or negative reinforcement.
When I first got on Lemmy, there were a bunch of discussions about getting rid of downvotes, and I thought this was a bad idea. For the most part, they do a good job of allowing the communities to self-moderate. Sure there are trolls that downvote everything, and they can rot in Hell, but they’re a very small majority. Generally speaking, up/downvotes provide an easy way to sort the wheat from the chaff in both posts and comments.
remember the heated discussions about the "proper" use of downvotes?
iirc there was a bloc of users who were very adamant that downvotes only be used for indicating the comment in question failed to adhere to the 1964 Chicago Manual of Style regarding commas or something, but everybody else was using it to say "don't like it" and they were super-cheesed.
Personally:
Upvote = I like it or it contributes well to discourse
Downvote = repeated trolling (first comment gets a pass, as do unpopular opinions, but doubling down on unambiguous and apolitical truths doesn't), spam, scams, etc.
To me, voting is mostly a sorting tool.
I may upvote to make sure a great comment is higher than the good comments around it. I may even disagree with the comment to some extent, but I'm still going to upvote, because I think it adds something important to the conversation and more people should read it. However, there are also situations when I upvote to show my approval.
Sure, that makes sense.
There are also trolls who constantly say controversial things. Looking at the downvote counter tells you something.
There are also people who... I don't really know what's going in the head of a person who intentionally insult everyone they come across. Did a nefarious little brother hijack that account or is that person really trying get some achievement about maxing out the downvote counter? Some people are a complete mystery. Either way, the downvote counter serves as a red flag.