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this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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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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I mean…books have been doing this for a while. No need to make it a game. Look at 1984 and see some parallels. Book was written 75 years ago but covers things like:
1984 is a bit of a cliche, but it has a lot of relevant discussion of modern issues in it.
Also Brave New World where everyone is too absorbed in entertainment and drugs to realize how fucked everything is, and Fahrenheit 451 because, y’know censorship.
Not exactly modern, and maybe a bit cartoonish, but given how old these books are it’s remarkable how relevant they still are.
Point is, doesn’t have to be a video game. Books are cheaper to produce and tend to need less financial incentive to be written. So you get better content.
Having read them all at some time in the past, I feel like, while they capture a lot of modern problems and are scaringly accurate in many of the predictions they make, they still don't create this "everyday" feeling.
Brave New World is probably closest to capturing what I'm looking for, even though it too opens immediately with a dystopian picture.
The thing is, it would be interesting to explore, in any form of art really, this progression from feeling completely normal about what happens to figuring out what everything actually means, which could lead to people questioning and investigating things in real life.
Fahrenheit 451 was fascinating for the sub-story about the TV walls and, "Oh look! The White Clown is on!"
Best friend held an acid party back in 1991 or so. From where we stood we could see all 3 TVs, 3 different sizes. He said, "Check it out. The attention people pay to the screen is directly proportional to it's size." Didn't matter was was on screen, the larger it was, the more people stared, the less they talked. That's really stuck with me.
And the parasocial relationships with the people are the screen foretold much.
Can't imagine many would care about book burning today. I only know one other person that reads books, and few even "read" the internet.
I remember thinking the interactive TV thing was dumb when I read it in middle school (early 2000s).
But now we have streamers who just sit there and say "mmm ice cream!" whenever someone gives them a dollar.