this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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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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Or restrict them to people who have something meaningful to contribute. Low effort vs. high effort. You'd have to be explicit that that's the purpose of the community and that's how it works. I remember some great posts on r/TrueFilm back in the day. A lot of it was by people who were either film students or who had degrees in film studies and had the kind of academic background needed to speak at length about a topic without it becoming trite. I have to say, I do miss it. The internet has gotten way dumber and way lazier over the years, in a lot of ways.
I suppose there could be communities focused away from conversations. Like an auditorium you rent for your class of 200 to watch a movie that isn't in print anymore and then discuss it afterwards. I imagine someone would stand up in said auditorium when they have a well formed idea or rebuttal to an idea, but refrain from standing just to add some conversational space filler like "I agree" and then sitting back down (which is kind of comical now that I think about it). Port over this idea into the internet and you get the communities you're talking about, correct?
Hmmm, not really. Rather, the community is specifically focused around conversation. But a different type of conversation. Typical internet conversations on reddit (and a lot of other places), especially over the last several years, seem to mainly occur in short bursts and at a fairly superficial level. The kind of community I'm envisioning is one in which there's a central topic or theme (such as film), but it focuses on fairly deep or complex conversations. If someone wants to respond to a comment made by another user, it'd typically be point by point with supporting evidence and argumentation. Or at least a well reasoned perspective. An okay, if not spectacular, example would be this post on reddit from a couple of years ago on r/TrueFilm (https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/khlrnv/a_brief_rant_about_my_cinema_students_and/). The post itself is a few hundred words and focuses on a central concept or observation made by the OP. Most top level comments are a paragraph or two. There are brief responses in the individual comment threads, but the actual discussion is fairly robust and provides new ideas and perspectives beyond just people saying "lmao same" or similarly useless comments.
That makes sense; maybe require a wordcount for the base level comments and a much lesser word count requirement for the replies?
That would be reasonable, I think. As you drill down into reply threads comments tend to become more focused on particular topics of conversation, in my experience, and so the size of any given reply might reasonably diminish.