this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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I tend to either act as a data hoarder, but most of the time end up being overwhelmed with anxiety about having so much data. Even when I just look at my personal photos, I just feel impeding doom knowing it can only grow and grow, it will never get smaller.

I was wondering if this had a term.

And coming from this question, I am just amazed by this community. What has prompted your interest in data hoarding?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Yep, I had a friend that matched exactly as the opposite of a data hoarder.
I asked him why would he behaves that way, not even saving the photos to hard drives when he switched to new phones. He said he hate his past, and there's nothing to look behind from present time. He had only few of his sport car's photos, few of his cat's photos, not much photos even moments with his girl friend. At the age of mid 20s, he has at most 1GB of his valuable data to keep.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And Here I am with 18 TB of selected out photo video storage... And that's just personal...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I find those "unselected" photo videos be also important for memories. You might want to just archive the "unselected" ones and open it like a treasure box 10 years later. You might find it valuable and glad you did not delete those 10 years later. Just my 2 cents of opinion haha

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

He straight up told me that he despised his past

That is so sad :(

I still have all the memories (photos, etc) and when I open them I feel nothing but gratitude because even if they're not so happy memories I learned a lot from those experiences. We are all out past, not just what we like. "All sunshine makes a desert" say the arabs and they're definitely not wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I don't think it's inherently sad. That is not me by any chance, but I am envious of the experience, in the same way I'm envious of buddhist monks who are happy with nothing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, I once knew a woman who deleted her emails after reading them, back when it was more popular pre social media.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

IMO this was common in the past because inbox quotas were very small. With many services only allowing users to have ~10-100MB it was critical to delete things (especially attachments).

When Gmail launched in 2004, providing 1GB of mail storage, gradually increasing to 15GB today, people's habits changed. That said, my university email almost a decade later still had a 100MB quota and it was very painful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

One forum I'm in still imposes a limit of 150 private messages. Feels like ancient times. There are only a couple hundred members, so it can't be that much storage fees. It's not like I absolutely need these messages, but I don't want to sort through / manually delete them every few months either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

you should delete all your mails today

it's one of many methods they profile you online

google is just another department of cia

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Damn... where you guys live? Let's make some good memories with him

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

You know what? I've got these awesome screenshots of some epic online moments with him. We're talking gameplays, chats, and those hilarious "lol" moments. They're like treasures to me, so I'm definitely gonna hold onto them and bring them up in conversations every now and then. They make for some great talking points, like a conversation piece of art.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Doesn't honestly sound that surprising for the age. Give it 20 years.