this post was submitted on 20 Aug 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. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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I feel like I used to see a lot of women with super long nails struggling to use their touchscreen phones. I'm sure at least some of them have chosen slightly shorter nails to make it easier.

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Nope. The ones I’ve seen use their knuckles, or awkwardly use the pads of their fingers. Saying this as a woman who doesn’t like long nails.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

Also a woman who doesn’t like long nails. They creep me out, especially when they start to curl.

The one who use their finger tips, make a very distinct clicking noise too.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Nope.

Time for everyone's favourite statistics lesson, "anecdotal evidence don't mean shit"!

OP did say average after all.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The prevelance of touchscreens much rather results in people lacking skills/efficiency/speed when using a regular computer keyboard

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Ironically, I can almost type as fast on my phone (102 WPM PB) as I can on most keyboards (110 WPM PB), and that's with my weird improper method of touch typing. These scores are for the 15 second word test on MonkeyType.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But I would assume you're used to using a 'manual' keyboard whereas if you only grew up on touchscreens its probably more difficult to get familiar to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Perhaps, but I sucked at touch typing when I was younger.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I assume that's SwiftKey/GBoard typing more than you, though? How fast are you on a computer with autocorrection turned on?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

thing is, for my dialect of German, autocorrect is less than useful, so for me, typing Bavarian on a phone keyboard is certainly the fastest at around 150 wpm, trumping english or german on any other board, probably because it exactly matches the way I speak and I've been doing it for 13 years

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

No idea; does autocorrect even exist in an inbuilt fashion on Windows? I've never really tried using anything like that.

Oh, and here's a one-off test I just did without autocorrection turned on. With a few more tries, I'm sure I could get up to 100+.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

Ever gone through a Walmart checkout?

I've never seen longer nails than on those cashiers, and they have to press buttons and touch screens all the damn time.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think its more like a fashion thing. I still see it with a specific type of woman

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

What, don’t wanna talk about it?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

...is she gonna walk with them and grow 6 feet higher?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I sorta assumed nails had a set length they grow to, much like hair

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

It's trivial to use a touchscreen with nails of arbitrary length if you're used to it. You can easily just use the side, where the cuticle is. If you put on acrylics you'll have some trouble adjusting, but if you let it grow naturally you'll adjust as they grow

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have 0 struggles when using touch screen with long nails

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Resistive ones worked better with nails than wothout them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Resistive touchscreens are soo 2005

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Damn, they were painful to use. I remember having a sore finger after an hour of scrolling on my first ever phone. It was an LG Java phone.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I've seen nail polish that supposedly allowed them to work with touch screens, kinda like gloves that work with them. I dunno how well it works; I don't paint my nails (or have long nails to begin with). I just remember seeing it on the shelf while at Walmart and getting shampoo.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The thing that confuses me about those nail polishes is like, anyone who uses nail polish to the point where they'd consider that would also be using a clear top coat, which seals the nail and would prevent the conductive nail polish from doing it's "thing"

...also it wouldn't work on most devices because most screens are capacitive, not resistive. Like you can use the backside of your nail on your screen with normal nail polish on and it'll work, because it's about the surface area and capacitive difference, not about closing a circuit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Lead-based nail polish

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

Intentionally making contact w your nails sounds awful. Who wants to listen to tap tap tap? How would that even work anyway? The polish isn't gonna be on the tip, would you have to turn your fingers upside down?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I tend to think that eventually they will only have fake long nails, and only when getting dressed up for something fancy.

I'm general in the future teens will make memes about long nails like they do now for something like the hamburger phone, or JNCOs, or whatever 00's trend.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh technology will change again, before we see any major changes. I remember reading some fifteen years ago that due to texting on an oldschool mobile phone, our thumbs might evolve in a new way because we all of a sudden used thumbs in a new way. Some scientists predicted we'd started using thumbs for tasks we'd otherwise use our index fingers for.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It could, however, make a social trend for shorter fingernails (primarily on women, I imagine). Just meaning people are more likely to trim their nails shorter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I know, but it might be a short trend (pardon the pun). It's also not a trend currently supported by my personal anecdotal evidence.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I bite my nails and I fucking hate using touchscreens and touchpads without some kind of stylus.