As of right now, we have very few methods with which to preserve any form of digital media. at least, nothing that guarantees preservation over a truly long period of time, or long enough to guarantee any kind of "legacy".
I am particularly fond of VHS tapes. they're becoming overpriced, and are often impractical. but there's a charming tactility to them, a determination to engage all five of the senses when using one. I love the heft of the tape, the heavy clunk as it slides into the VHS player, the smell of hot tape after the buzzing drone of rewinding. the subtleties of visual decay that emerge on a much-loved tape, not unlike the pops of a thoroughly rinsed vinyl. nostalgia plays its part to be sure, but i think we would be smart to try to discern some nuance in our use of the term. Nostalgia is defined by dictionary.com as:
a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.
However, the affection I have for a VHS tape doesn't stem from a desire to return to or relive the past, at least not completely. It's more similar to a craving -- a desire for the ritual of watching a VHS. A yearning for the familiar symphony of physicality and experience that encapsulates the whole experience. Ritual is a word with a slew of definitions, but in this instance I refer to this one:
any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.
Two lines of thinking here: one, regarding CONVENIENCE:
In this day and age, in which the culture of convenience has become predominant. If not convinced, take a look at just how many of our latest technological developments in America are geared towards eliminating effort, not in an industrial development kind of way, but much more frequently the effort of time. A surreal amount of new applications and tech are meant to remove the need for planning, for consideration (careful or otherwise), and even for thinking at all (Chat GPT, for example).
In an act of casual rebellion against this perilous encroachment of convenience into our lives, I posit THE RITUAL. The incorporation of ritual into one's everyday life, the intentional choice to dedicate time and energy to performing a familiar set of actions. The romance of dedicating oneself to the loyalty and pleasure of ritual over the seductive, empty embrace of convenience. And yes, there is such romance in it! I am at once enraptured and horrified by how the incorporation of ritual into my daily practice all but instantaneously improves it.
You see, the very nature of the ritual disarms the convenient. A VHS is not just a VHS. It first requires the curation of a collection, of even one single tape, which also requires a deliberate choice by the individual to own this specific movie (an affirmation/acknowledgment of the presence of personal taste). To choose to watch a movie one physically owns (and this applies to DVDs and even archived digital media as well, but I'll refrain from placing the cart before the horse) removes oneself from the malevolent womb of streaming services and algorithms. No longer can I be spoon-fed whatever one CEO or another sees fit -- now I am forced to confront the poor nature of my own decisions (a bit of self-deprecation) as well as the joint glories and failures of my personal collection! As I take stock and decide what to watch, I am actively understanding myself, and actively comparing my past self to my future desires. I am forced to understand myself well enough to know what it is I want to watch (and make plans to acquire a movie deliberately in the future if needed) as well as to decide what it is I don't want to watch, and maybe don't need to own any longer.
All of this removes one from the culture of convenience. Anything that forces you more deeply into your body, allows you to tap into what it is you feel, need, desire, and truly, not based on what you're being told by businesses and algorithms whose entire job is to prevent you from ever feeling a feeling you weren't sold by their algorithm -- that is just, and true, and those are the experiences you should pursue, and try to incorporate as much as possible into your life. After all, what you're being sold is a lie.
I am reminded of SMT III: Nocturne's "Amala Network," a sort of hi-speed soul superhighway that can transport you from place to place via some kind of energetic/soul connection. (If there's a clearer explanation given, I haven't reached that point in the game yet, or maybe my memory is failing me.) Algorithm (an intrinsic subset of the Culture of Convenience) is an addictive drug, meant to hook you into entering the Corporate Amala Network of human souls. Once you're in, you will spend more and more of your time keeping up with its hi-speeds, feeling like you are meeting everyone, knowing everything, achieving something that matters.
Except that nothing will be remembered, the speed will always get faster and the stakes higher, the memory spans shorter, the connections more tenuous and less emotional, and when we all die there's almost a 0% chance anything on the Internet will survive.
Paper is still the best option for recording any history for the far future, and even then we have to hope that future can read our language -- or interpret however we chose to communicate.
And regarding MEMORY:
It is my strong opinion that the very culture of convenience has permanent, negative effects on memory. Both individually, and collectively. I have often noticed how much more difficult it is for me to remember artist name, album name, and the names of individual tracks on an album if I have only listened to that album on streaming. Compared to my sharp awareness of exactly which records I own physically, what the booklets look like for each CD I own, what color each cassette is in my collection, I can't deny the effect sensory engagement has on memory -- and I believe I am not alone in that presumption, and neither do I need to prove its existence. (I might insert some kind of study here if I can find it.)
Of course, memory decays as well. My memory is certainly not as sharp as it once was (although I will die believing that has been accelerated by convenience). Physical memory storage decays as well. CDs burn holes in the data, VHS tapes demagnetize, internal components on hard drives fail. Collective consciousness forgets universal truths over time, if we aren't careful. It's only natural to swim upstream against this current for some time, but it has yet to ever be beaten. Our world exists as a recursive loop, and so does everything in it, eventually.
When it comes down to it, all things decay. The ways in which our culture of newfound convenience removes us from this frigid and unavoidable truth are making us dumber, and permanently harming our collective memory as a species. Mankind's ego is such that we seek endlessly for ways to live forever. We aspire to create legacies in art or business that will keep us alive for centuries beyond our own years. Realistically, this is an honor bestowed upon very few in the first place -- but that's beside the point. The current issue is that we are no longer reminded by any of our technology that decay is inevitable.
Go to an art museum, and look closely at some of the most celebrated mid-century modernist paintings. Unconventional painting methods and new approaches to artistry have left many of these paintings in extant states of decay. Some of these paintings seem like they might only last a few more decades past the death of their artists. It's a tragedy, it's a tragedy, archivists cry out! And so we photograph them, put them in digital archives and let out a collective sigh of relief. Ah, we think, now everyone can access this, now this will live on forever.
Until, that is, someone stops paying for the website.
Until someone can no longer afford to host the server.
Until the internal workings of the servers themselves overheat and fry, and entropic decay claims another of its infinite, promised victims (everything and everyone, without exception -- perhaps only delay).
We (the royal we, of course) are not forced to confront this reality anymore. The tangibility of a book reminds us of the physicality, the reality of its existence. Tearing a page reminds us of its intrinsic fragility. I only speak from observation, of course, but I don't believe most individuals perceive their use of the internet as an act of physical storage. The nomenclature "the Cloud" certainly doesn't help to prevent anyone from seeing it in the abstract. The reality is, though, that we have all been bamboozled by convenience into paying someone else, someone we cannot trust, to hold everything for us. We own nothing, we understand little, and the infrastructure of our data centers and communication pathways is arguably more infirm than it has been in centuries. And so we return to the point I sort of accidentally ended on last section:
Nothing will be remembered, the speed will always get faster and the stakes higher, the memory spans shorter, the connections more tenuous and less emotional, and when we all die there's almost a 0% chance anything on the Internet will survive.
Anyways, list of things I'm into right now to end because I'm tired and hungry and want to eat my salad. Also going to include a second list of goals I would like to achieve for my own reference.
Things I'm into right now:
- De Blob 2 (video game)
- Bridgerton
- The Pitt season 2
- Heated Rivalry / Hudson Williams & Connor Storrie
- #conformitygate
- The Pits // Rational Order
- Pirate-style clothes
- Rugged gentlemanly fashion / wearable period-piece style clothing
- Northernlion miscellaneous videos (trivia etc.)
- A few small beers, aka going out to the bar with friends for a drink or two instead of going out to party
- Watching movies
- Listening to CDs in the car instead of contentslop
Things I would like to achieve in 2026:
- Mod my dad's old iPod classic into a modern mp3 player
- Following #1, establish an organized personal music archive / library
- Read minimum one book a month
- Watch more movies, particularly those on Criterion
- Fix my car
- Start tattooing again
- Pay off personal credit card debt
- Release AKAFAE album
- Release album with a band
- Make music videos (at least one, maybe a few)
- Write on this blog more
- Make personal website (honestly should do this one asap)
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