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Hoarding
- jackallis 3y agoCurioulsy, what about digital hoarding? endlessly bookmarking things to never visit them again.
- bombcar 3y agoOr storing terabytes of data offline. Probably similar reasons but with less real-world harm.
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoHey, what's wrong with actually owning your data? :p (I'm watching Shin Chan again lately. Last time I used Netflix, years ago, I remember they took it down due to some licensing reason. That actually spurred me on to get it, and now I can watch it any time. Muaha)
- thelastparadise 3y agothis is a sign the person hasn't yet fully ubderstood and accepted the inevitability of their own death. in their mind, they will live forever and eventually have time to visit each bookmark.
- bombcar 3y agoI do poor-man's bookmark hoarding; I leave tabs open on things I am interested in, until said tabs fail or the browser crashes. If I don't bother reopening them, that part is passed.
- ask_b123 3y agoThis is the reason why I could consider myself a hoarder, but > Hoarding is absolutely not laziness. A lazy person does not resist someone cleaning up for them! tells me that I might just be lazy. And digital hoarding is not too bad since I almost never see my bookmarks, it doesn't affect me much.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pabs3 3y agoJason Scott has a post about the relationship between his trauma and digital archiving activities: https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5443 https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5443
- ksec 3y agoI am not sure if I am in that group. But somewhat counter intuitively I would actually hoard a lot less if I have huge amount of money. i.e Most things could easily be replaced or bought. I do have videos and music files, but I dont think I hoard them. I keep them because I know none of the file / video / music streaming services can be trusted. I think of it as a Distribution problem. Not a hoarding problem.
- thelastparadise 3y ago> I think of it as a Distribution problem. Not a hoarding problem. imo this is exactly the line of thought that leads to bona fide hoarding they're not crazy (most of them). it's an unfortunate set of circumstances, or they went in the right direction, but too far/with bad timing
- bombcar 3y agoSome of the most prolific hoarders have quite a bit of money; in fact it can be part of the annoyance dealing with parents who have millions in the bank and yet insist on not throwing away that old bottle of dried up shoe polish "because it's still useful".
- Tao3300 3y ago> I keep them because I know none of the file / video / music streaming services can be trusted. That's not an emotional attachment, that's just practical. My kids are going to be like "Neil Young? Sorry, never heard of him" because he pulled his music off Spotify -- a blunder that lies somewhere in the space between a disservice to future generations and an "own goal".
- javchz 3y agoI think should be a balance. I went full digital Marie Kondo a few years back, and I regret it. I'm into a lot of niche media, like covers or small indie band scenes. And at the beginning having everything in Spotify or YouTube seems nice... Until there is a rights issue or something worse (like an artist being doxed) and the song it's deleted and became lost media. Now I backup everything in a 2x2TB HDD just in case (Mirrored across 2 computers using syncthing, similar to Raid 1) and seeing how my music playlist in YouTube it's full of gray thumbnails, I think was a good investment.
- bombcar 3y agoThere's a real value to digital hoarding, because external forces are operating against you, and it will all crumble to dust. It's also nice that you can digitally hoard billions of megabytes in the space of a small shoebox.
- perilunar 3y agoThis. I can't see any downside to digital hoarding. A couple of hard drives is not going to turn your house into a dump. They are very easy to search. It imposes very little on your relatives after you die. And as you say, things frequently disappear online. If you want to always have access to something it's worthwhile keeping your own unencrypted copy.
- jonhohle 3y agoThat’s what’s sad (imho) with moving away from physical releases. Getting a pressed CD was cheap, even for the most cash strapped band. I could take it home, rip it and have copies on an iPod, a CD-RW for the car, on my computer and media server. Should anything happen, the original disc is right there to rip again. Movies are the same. With the demise of video rental shops, and content going in an out of half a dozen streaming services, it can be really challenging to find obscure movies that used to be easy to find. Browsing sucks now as well. And if I throw that into a watch later list and get back to it in a few weeks, there’s a chance it won’t be there. I’d love to pair down my physical collections, but that concern of losing something and not being able to find it again is a huge impediment.
- nbenitezl 3y agoIt seems like rich version of Diogenes syndrome, instead of taking from rubbish you buy them new (so you accumulate more slowly).
- 29athrowaway 3y agoWhen it comes to code and product features, most organizations check all 3 boxes.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoThere is rarely that intention but rewards for refactoring and removing tech debt are usually nonexistent. It's more of a Tragedy of the Commons.
- phaedrus 3y agoI grew up in two hoarder houses (parents and grandparents). I disagree with many of the things said in this article. First of all the thing about hoarding being triggered by loss: I think this has more to do with psychoanalysts looking for an explanatory reason of that sort. (I.e. Freudian bullshit.) From my observation it is more of a genetic personality trait that the person has already had the inclination to hoarding independent of any life events. Certainly life events or the loss of a loved one could make a barely-in-control hoarding situation spiral out of control, but it didn't start the hoarding any more than gunshot sounds cause avalanches unless avalanche conditions were already present. Second to the points about inability to describe the objects in detail, to handle the objects for more than a short time, or not being able to reliably tell the animals apart in an animal hoarding situation. We had 19 cats (in a 2 bedroom), and it was bad for us and the animals, but we definitely could tell them apart! Photographic memory runs in my family; most of us could in fact describe most of the objects. That's part of the problem! A tendency to see every object as unique contributes to inability to not keep them all. I feel like TFA was written from the perspective of someone who has no personal experience or understanding. A recent experience at my mother's house provides a much better illustration of why hoarding happens. Her doorstep had rotted out and I had to rebuild it. My mother suggested I use some polyurethane coating to finish the wood, but the bottle she'd been saving had been open an unknown number of years and turned into a disgusting milkshake. I said we better not use that and would just buy a new bottle. I asked if I could take the spoiled bottle to the trash for her and she almost agreed, but at the last moment stopped me. She wanted to look up on the internet whether there was a way to turn the spoiled polyurethane back into usable, and asked me to put it in the separate RV (itself falling to pieces) until she has time to do that. Here's the key: it's an inability to make decisions. That's it. The emotional distress component follows from the stress of being unable to make a decision, not the other way around. (The reason a decision cannot be made is because the future cannot be completely known, thus it is impossible to say a discarded item will definitely not turn out to have been needed.) The build-up of things comes from putting off the decisions to keep or get rid of things indefinitely.
- steveBK123 3y agoI think your point at the end about the inability to make decisions hits the nail on the head. Would be interesting to see a study of decisiveness & hoarding correlation. Inertia is a hell of a thing. Selling, donating, recycling, or disposing of items is an active decision.
- m463 3y agoI think everyone has hoarding behavior wired into their psyche. Some people have it trained out of their behavior, but many have had it trained in. Lots of retail and software companies train you to make money. Free to play gaming companies monetize by creating collections of things, and making you jump through hoops to complete them. Retail does it. Clothing companies make clothes that work as a set. Power tool companies make batteries that only work with their collection of tools, and keep adding tools. Apple ecosystem. maintaining is another subject. Is that organizing? I've listened to a few audiobooks on organizing. Two that stood out were the Tidying book by Marie Kondo's, and also Decluttering at the Speed of Life by Dana White. At first, the clear winner was Marie Kondo. It made so much sense, philosophically. You just adopt this mindset, everyone in japan does it, and boom. However, it was really hard to implement ("do it all at once") and never got going. The Decluttering audiobook was actually annoying at first, too many examples that I didn't connect with. Philosophically it seemed wrong too ("just get rid of stuff until the stuff you have fits"). However, in the end I think it has practical advice... and then goes on to some real wisdom. (maybe implement decluttering then read kondo afterwards)
- not_the_fda 3y agoI don't think everyone has hoarding wired into their psyche. I am the complete opposite, I hate accumulating things and having any clutter. My spouse does like to hold onto things well past their usefulness for emotional reasons, and it's a constant source of conflict because I want to get rid of them.
- resolutebat 3y ago> everyone in japan does it Nope, not even close. Quite the opposite, in fact, as Japanese offices and apartments tend to be full to the brim with crap. Partly this is by necessity, since both are also tend to be quite small and cramped by Western standards, but being well behind the curve on moving away from paper to digital also contributes. https://i1.wp.com/www.allaboutlean.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Kadokawa_office.jpg?ssl=1 https://i1.wp.com/www.allaboutlean.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
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- readthenotes1 3y agoI was hoping this would be about neat signs plastered on the side of buildings in Bengaluru...
- frankus 3y agoI find a reversal test is sometimes useful when considering whether to keep something: if I didn’t already own it, would I buy it for an amount that it might sell it for.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoI'm betting prehistoric peoples who didn't squirrel away supplies, food, etc. were less successful than those who did. OTOH, you can't accumulate crap to where you can't move around it. Throwing everything away to the point of Steve Jobs' minimalism with a lamp and stereo is another opposite, inefficient extreme.
- Tor3 3y agoPrehistoric peoples were often living a nomadic life, and then you just can't hold on to more than what you absolutely need.
- djmips 3y agoI think there can a narcissistic component to hoarding - the internal narrative such that I am the best person to curate / guide / fix these valuable objects. And to keep them out of the hands of rivals / unwashed masses. Maybe this gets more to why rich people hoard money.
- the-mitr 3y agoSome points resonate, some don't. By this definition I am physical books hoarder (4-5k). But I can surely tell each book apart and where/when I got it. I definitely don't have enough space to store all of them well, yet new books keep being added every year (though in recent years its down to trickle). For me it is like having a personal reference library, more like a miniature version of Umberto Eco's library, and you really don't know what you might need/read in the future. So yes, there are piles of books that I have not read, might not read at all, (there is a apt Japanese word for these unread piles of books: tsundoku) but also that there is a hope/belief that someday I will read/need them. Of course, now that almost everything is digitised you can get a much larger access to knowledge. But its just that it feels good to have a physical book with you.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoThere's a part here that people seem to miss about hoarders. Horders live powerless lives. It's rare that you seen an insanely wealthy person who built their own business who hoards things. Usually, hoarders have had either an emotional abuse component growing up or emotional trauma as an adult. What's money equal? Power. Hoarders with a few dollars in their pocket will seek out that next high that they get from purchasing an item that they MIGHT use some day. From the time they put that item in their cart until the time that they make the purchase, THEY are in control of the decision making process. It might be the only time they ever feel in control of their own lives, as the mounds of stuff close them in and hamper their movement. I see hoarding as sort of a sister to people who have issues with overeating, especially those who were conditioned to "clean your plate." The compulsion to eat until past full because you've got a food opportunity that you must not squander is probably a decent part of the reason that we have as many overweight people as we do. It's not enough to sit, have a nice dinner and some conversation, and let the food settle while you eat, discarding a bit if you get full. For some families, you are expected to consume every speck of food lest it go to waste. This ends with people feeling that they are satiated only when they are stuffed because they have been conditioned to behave in that manner.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> It's rare that you seen an insanely wealthy person who built their own business who hoards things. Well, insanely wealthy people are a miniscule share of the population, whether or not they’ve built there own business to get that way, so, yes, its rare to see someone in the overlap of those sets. And rich people can hoard a lot more before it becomes problematic, or even noticeable.
- marymkearney 3y agoI might have the opposite problem. I like my space way more than my stuff. I want all my corners cleaned out, all paper mail recycled, all counters clear. Luckily I haven't yet tipped into "compulsive decluttering" which is apparently the opposite side of the hoarding coin. "Compulsive decluttering is the act of throwing items, or clutter, away, or getting rid of them in an attempt to "clean up".... Even though it is the polar opposite of compulsive hoarding, the two are related because they both fall under the umbrella of OCD in different ways. Compulsive decluttering is also known as compulsive decluttering disorder, and is also known as "compulsive spartanism." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_decluttering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_decluttering