⤹ why i still buy physical media

Hello hello! It's been a while since I last posted a blog on here and the last one being about one of my favorite games. In the past few months that I haven't been on here I've been finding myself in a bit of a shopping spree going around reminiscing on old forms of media. This blog won't be written the way my usual blogs are, most likely this will be some sort of thought dump so don't expect much formality in this post. </3 I hope you all enjoy reading!

Technology has advanced so much, like genuinely so much with the creations of AI, such addicting applications, everything you are able to access anywhere and all at once is something that people once thought was not possible. With things like Netflix we're able to watch endless movies, with our phone cameras and galleries we are able to take and store photos for many years to come, with Google you are able to access thousands and thousands of articles, sites, and other bullshit that relates to your search and I feel that it's this availability that has definitely killed the need to buy physical media like DVD's, cassettes, and such.

Now I was DEFINITELY not born in the age of cassettes but I was definitely born in the age when things like CD's and DVD's was certainly popular. Though it died down as I grew, I don't think I'll ever forget how many ding dang darn DVD's we had.

My grandfather was a huge techie, by the time I was born he had owned almost a thousand DVD's. He was a collector, he had directors cuts of every movie possible, some with featurette's, most with additional content, limited edition packaging. It was a whole wall on our house with DVD's separated by genre, how many additional content there was, and by length of the movie itself.

It was a large collection in my eyes and it was arranged and numbered in a way where I knew how much my grandfather loved collecting these and a few weeks ago, I returned to my grandparents house and lo and behold his collection grew in a way that I didn't expect. He'd expanded his reach from CD's and DVD's to buying out old cassettes and vinyl records for my grandmother.

Obviously this was a ton of money to spend and especially on such a large collection with the equipment you need to run it either being really expensive. During my visits I asked about why he still kept so many of these things, I could understand why he'd keep the collectors and limited edition ones but why everything else? What he told me was something that convinced me to do the same.

If I remember correctly, his reasoning for keeping so many of these discs was simple. He loved the ritual of it. 

I was so damn confused like a ritual???

Then he explained it to me. Every time he wants to watch something, he stands up and looks for the case. The feeling of searching through an intensive collection for the one movie you want then taking it off the shelf brings a feeling. He takes it out of the discs, turns on the TV, and places it inside of the disc reader. From here the movie plays and until the next movie does he gets up to do the same.

It sounded like a really tedious process, atleast for me, until I remembered one of my favorite memories from when I was a child. I grew up watching DVD and especially so watching The Walking Dead on DVD's. Every hour or so, I'd be the one taking the new season out of the disc and replacing the one previously inside with it and I don't know why I loved doing it so much. It should have been repetitive but that process, that small ritual, felt like each time I took it out of the case and back in made my connection with the series grow deeper each time.

It's hard to say the same thing about rewatching the same shows on Netflix. Hell, you don't even get to keep the movies you pay subscriptions for on ANY streaming site. You pay for the license that allows you to watch it at any time and any moment. Big corp can literally just take any movie from that subscription you pay for off and with the rising prices of subscription, atp it's just better to revert to buying physical media IF you have the space to store large amounts of it.

But going back to the point, going through those same rituals again made me happy. I think, on top of this barely cohesive rant, that happiness was the reason why I've reverted to just more "oldie" ways of doing things. I've started a small collection of DVD's myself, the first of that being Pulp Fiction and Arriety. A timeless combination if I do say so myself. It seems like I'll be doing this for a long time to come, i'll be inheriting the good old DVD collection soon enough so why not make my own memories buying some of my own? Physical media is where we started and I plan on preserving it while the whole world goes to shit addicted </3

Respect to those that own and buy physical media alongside digital media. Like Artbooks for video games, vinyl's, dvds, the stuff. Ya'll are real for that, I finally understand why now.