About

"Shower Thought", sometimes spelled without space as "showerthought," is an Internet slang term for an idea or epiphany that is formed while taking a morning shower.

Origin

On January 30th, 2009, Urban Dictionary^[4] user Kageka submitted an entry for "showerthought," defining it as "an idea, thought or concept" that comes during part of a "morning routine."

Spread

On October 18th, 2011, the /r/showerthoughts^[1] subreddit was launched for submissions of notable ideas formed during showers. On July 4th, 2013, CollegeHumor^[3] highlighted several example posts taken from /r/showerthoughts. On September 29th, the single topic blog MyShowerThought^[6] was launched, which allows users to vote on and submit showerthoughts.

On April 19th, 2014, YouTuber Troye Sivan uploaded a video titled "Thoughts in the Shower," in which he reenacts his morning routine narrated with a humorous internal monologue (shown below). In the next four months, the video received upwards of 1.3 million views and 4,400 comments.

On July 31st, the Internet humor site The Meta Picture^[5] published a compilation of Just Girly Things-style image macros featuring showerthought captions (shown below).

On August 5th, Wired^[2] published an article about "eureka moments" occurring in the shower. On August 20th, the Internet news blog Mashable published a video in which actor Nick Offerman recites various submissions from the /r/showerthoughts subreddit (shown below). In the first 24 hours, the video gained over 580,000 views and 260 comments.

Search Interest

External References