I listened to a thing from a sex psychologist ages ago who talked about this. She said there was a connection between the developing arousal (sexual) and arousal (general emotional) that forms during the transition from childhood to adolescence, so there is commonly a connection formed between something the then-child has strong emotions toward, positive or negative, so a person can develop a sexual fixation on something beloved (mommy/daddy is perfect love personified. Dinosaurs are so frigging cool. etc.) or terrifying. (Mommy/daddy is mad. The monster is going to eat me all up. etc.)
Showerthoughts
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:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
Wasn’t really allowed to have the tv on in my house. Guess that explains the therapy.
She was the head of my class, if you know what I mean...

Some of mine were there even before any media influence whatsoever. It probably helps with discovery, sure. But to me, they seem to be entirely innate.
Same honestly, it's rather strange how I remember having mine at an early age, and that's when I didn't have any internet access of the sort, no sexual trauma or encounters.
I had freebasics when I was younger, but long after having my tastes. At the time it only allowed you to browse specific sites without images, one of them being Wikipedia and I remember thinking I must have been a reincarnation of either Sade or Masoch. Strange thoughts!
xena .
Weirdly, whenever the thing I like now (or stuff that could be compared to it anyway, since obviously the intent of the authors of those movies and shows was different from that of people making fetish art) would come up in tv and movies when I was a kid, I actually found it scary to a degree most other scary scenes didnt. And the second-oldest dream I can still remember having from when I was a kid was a nightmare involving it. Clearly at some point during or after puberty my brain did a 180 on that but since I dont remember the subject ever coming up in anything I watched during my teens, I cant pinpoint exactly when that was.
Apparently the signals for arousal and fear can get cross-wired in your brain. It wasn't fear for me, but I remember when I was a hormonal teen, I would play video games and get so fucking frustrated is have to crank one out to feel better. Maybe that's the same thing. Maybe I was just weird.
Also apparently that's why taking a date to a horror movie or amusement park can get you laid. Or maybe it's all bullshit.
That would explain the porn stars poping ballons i once saw.
Don't remind me.