There is definitely a hoarding part, the saving grace being that taking and storing dozens of thousands of pictures doesn't cost much nor incur severe penalties

There is definitely a hoarding part, the saving grace being that taking and storing dozens of thousands of pictures doesn't cost much nor incur severe penalties compared to the IRL counterpart. On looking back at pictures, people have wildly different relations with the pics they take, for me it's in lieu of a diary and I'll look at series from a specific time frame, and not individual "favorited" photos like some people do. In that respect it's hard to tell beforehand which pictures will be meaningful after 10 years, but it still feels worth to have the whole complete stream. > Why is this so? If I was asked for a photo of some place for a middle school handmade newspaper, I'd hate to have to check what's the licenses on the photos from the net and read 20 pages of legalese in the case it falls under a commercial use because they sell the paper 50 cents a unit. Or if I were to use one on a freelance blog, etc. It's not a rational calculation, just the comfort of not having to care at all about who took the shot, for what purpose and audience etc. and just use pictures I like for whatever, wherever I want.