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> Too the point where I feel motivated to write a script to delete anything beyond >1-2yrs back. Please don't. I used to write a diary with meaningless essays
by shubhamjain 10y ago
> Too the point where I feel motivated to write a script to delete anything beyond >1-2yrs back.
Please don't. I used to write a diary with meaningless essays when I was in the second grade. When I rediscovered it as an adult, I found them so embarrassing that I threw it away. It's hard to say how much I wish I hadn't done that. Those idiotic essays could have been my good memories; little reminders of how I thought in the past. Same happened with the old applications I wrote when I was starting out programming.
I still have an embarrassing history intact on various internet forums. I wanted to obliterated it some time back, but I realised there is nothing to feel humiliated about your past idiocy, it's in fact a great reminder to keep of how much you have grown.
- 3131s 10y agoI made and distributed about 500 copies of an underground heavy metal zine when I was 18. It was pretty cringe-worthy, but it is what is, and fortunately given the obscurity of the topic I don't think anyone will ever connect it to my IRL identity.
- snerbles 10y agoAs a personal reminder, I agree. No one else cares, until they do. And when they do, any little thing in your past can and will be used as a social cudgel against you.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- magic_beans 10y agoI have many diary entries from the 2nd grade that I find sweet and charming. My diary entries from 7th grade to 12th grade are utterly cringe-worthy and really ought to be burned.
- cryptarch 10y agoIt's great to have for as long as it does not indirectly tie back to your LinkedIn ;) But when writing that scrubbing script you may as well make it save a local copy.
- dwaltrip 10y agoI deleted all my reddit comments at one point, but not before saving an offline copy for myself! The main difference with a personal diary and online comments is that the former is something only you and your closest companions have access too, versus the whole world for online comments in a public forum No one knows all of the countless purposes those comments could be used for in future decades. The extent to which such mundane daily interactions are now preserved is a totally new dynamic in human society, and I don't think a bit of caution is unreasonable