Ask Lemmygrad

our possessions tie us to our past, and it's to our benefit to choose those ties carefully. how does having those big troves of things you will never look at again make you feel?

Yea, i regularly curate my stuff.

I came across a trove of my old web scrapings from over a decade ago and had a great time going throught it all. Learned some things about myself, where I'd been and where I am now and seeing the growth vector. It feels a bit like book burning to me to destroy such an archive. What would it cost you to find some storage and just put it on there and into the attic? Even if you never see it again, maybe your loved ones will. I'd be proud for anyone to see what I've saved from the past few years.

I couldn't read the entire piece, it felt like a rambling thought line that didn't get edited or streamlined.

Regardless, I can relate to the sentiment, but I disagree about the reasons. A lot of what made the early internet fun and engaging is lost, but not because of being bored of the trend but because the experience was slightly changed to be a bit worse in favor of profits a million of times. Back when it was all blogs, forums and random websites, individuals would write and share ideas, have conversations and whether that could be a way to make money was not the point. Now we live and die by the whims of the algorithm, 90% of internet traffic is 5 websites and people don't really own the content they make for money rather than fun.

I'm not sure if you're serious about the internet dying, it is basic infrastructure that improves efficiency for everyone from governments and corporations to individuals, it is not limited to being a source of information and entertainment, or a platform to express your opinion.

Calling it an infrastructure might not be accurate, the internet at its core is a global network of interconnected machines, the widespread connectivity is what makes it the internet, such a concept will still exist even if hardware advances.

Regarding purging online stuff, some people might find sentimental value in reviewing what they used to watch/listen to many years later. If you have issues with storage space, just store a text list of music you've heard, links to videos/articles you've watched/read, names of movies/shows/books/games you've watched/read/played, and add a date for additional context for future you. As for images, do not delete any of your personal photos but also keep them safe, memes can be deleted because popular ones are readily available and the rest don't matter. Non-personal photos mostly don't matter unless you have some use for them.

Digital "hoarding", for lack of a better term, is not a new problem, but is much easier to achieve than physical hoarding due to cheaper storage in terms of physical space. People used to and still do collect physical tapes/disks/newspapers/posters/books.

Reading the blogs linked in OP shows how annoyingly fast trends are changing or the “vibe is shifting”, I know I’m concentrating on all the wrong parts but is it really necessary to change trends every 5 years at this point? Especially when it comes with drastic body changes and it really affects femmes (and mascs and etc. as well to a lesser extent) I have a friend that got a BBL done to have this huge butt but apparently she’s upset that she caught on to the trend “too late” and now “Ozempic skinny” is what’s cool. How frustrating.

I would purge any self identifying information but otherwise it doesn't really matter.

That was a very interesting substack.

I think, if that is true - then what does it matter? I might as well just use shit until it's officially "gone" or whatever. I do agree it's on the way out, btw. At least the form we have now. I'm not sure how the world is going to proceed from that.