Just so you know, this is not a rant, it’s a hoarding story, maybe a sad one. A reality check.
I’m almost depressed that i’m a data hoarder. I don’t know how many of you ever thought we may not be so different from the psychiatric traditional hoarder you may have seen in movies. You know, the guy that used to collect everything on the street, stuff he never used, but needed to have around the house. It’s a shame they used to portray them as tinfoil-hat batshit crazy outcasts. That’s probably the extreme case.
This is my passion, i love what i’m doing, why would i be depressed?
Well, i had i’ve been busy with work in the past 4 years and i’ve been missing out on gaming.
This comes straight from the list i’ve just finished filtering from wikipedia “2020-2023_in_video_games”
A list managed by hoarders like you and me just so you know.
Took me a while to watch trailers and reviews, turns out there are about 250 worth playing games released, mostly AAA. Adding that to the 200 games i’m already awaiting to play, considering an average 10 hour gameplay per single player game, it would take 4500 hours of gameplay in the near future. Lucky for me i’ve already played everything important past 2020 except for the mentioned 200. Lucky!
And considering there are about 200 films on average released each year, some i may have seen, but about 1000 are awaiting to be watched. Btw i’ve spent 3 months filtering the complete imdb list using the search function and sorting everything above 5.5 score sorting according to number of votes. I’ve already seen most important cinema. It took me 20 years and i don’t regret it. but still 1000 left! that’s 1500 more hours added to the 4500 of gaming.
Now let’s do some math. 6000 hours of screen time thanks to my hoarding habit, how much would it take to consume this data.
If on an average day i’m working 8 hours, one hour commuting, one hour dedicated to food, two hours dedicated to social media and procrastinating online, one hour of sport or other outdoor time, 7 hours sleeping at night, that would leave me on average with 4 hours dedicated to gaming and watching a film. That’s exactly 4 years i’m in need to recover everything i’ve been missing.
The thing is, in the next years there will be more games and films released, it would double the required time for me to consume. This is a trap, a never ending game you cannot finish. And if somehow you manage your time more efficiently and actually consume everything in time, the game will start all over again. Busy with work, put games and films on hold and so on.
Point of the discussion is, don’t hoard! consume and delete. Stay with what is released in the present month. Sell your 20tb hdds and keep a 1tb one. Less really is better for your mental health and everything else. If the day would be 48 hours, probably i would still not have enough time.
I’m not even discussing here my early past, back in the 2000s when i used to collect Hanna Barbera cartoons, i’ve spent years tracking everything online, collecting everything they’ve made. Those were irc fserv dark times. Years of my time dedicated to cartoons i’ve never consumed. Buying hdds, sharing, filtering and encoding captures and dvds, then came blurays and collection was over because i’ve lost interest and mostly of what i worked hard collecting was getting replaced, even by web-dls i did not grab.
They were meant to be watched with my child. The child i never had with the wife i never married. All out of some stupid choice of hoarding on cartoons i’ve seen on tv as a child. This took me here and thinking about the future which seems depressing. Maybe if i never hoarded back then, i would of dedicated that time finding a good woman and having a family life right now. This is what probably what some drug addicts think of their lives after losing everything.
At the end of a hoarder’s life, what is the last thing a hoarder would be thinking of? “-Damn, i still haven’t finished them games!”
PS: i have about 1000 pdfs of important books i was going to read. Maybe i’ll skip them for a while. Thank God i’m not into porn. I think a proper porn collection would require at least 200tb space.
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Your daily schedule is depressing to read. Why not socialise with other smart and interesting humans? Or see the world.
i agree, my life actually is depressing. but socializing doesn’t really make me happy
i’m afraid it’s too late for change, as i don’t have anything in common with 90% of people, that includes socializing behavior. i would not even know how to relate to them, and if i did, it would be extremely forced
99% of my activities have been solo for 15 years…
Try solo travel. Go somewhere with a completely different culture for a few months. It might change your life.
This is obviously the opposite of what this whole sub is about, but I do think it will be a message many (not all) can benefit from.
It’s possible to take things too far for sure.
Why opposite? because the average hoarder just stores and doesn’t organize? some may not consume at all. I always organized with the fact in mind, that new stuff was coming requiring free space. The thing is i never had enough space, but i’ve figured out early, the trick is to limit the owned hdd space. It’s exactly as money. As if i would be forcing myself to live out of my monthly payment without a loan. If a person earns 10 times more than me, he will probably spend it in the same rhythm as i do. The second rule would be, to force yourself to delete everything you consume. If you do not delete especially large stuff, you will never escape this loop.
I totally get what you mean. I’ve caught myself hoarding data to just “complete” something in the past.
I’d catch myself just getting 10 seasons of shows I’m not even interested in watching as an example.
I’ve made a conscious effort to keep everything <5tb (which is still a lot of data among regular people who have like 256gb Macbook Air and 200gb iCloud storage and that’s it.)
i do it because i’m never in the moment and always have to save everything for later