I grew up enchanted with stories of “lost media”: clips of “SpongeBob SquarePants” that exist only within memories posted on various Reddit forums, television series our parents grew up with completely lost to time, the Library of Alexandria burning to the ground in 48 B.C.E. Lost media has taken on a different tone in recent years: the need for physical media is stronger than ever.
Now, lost media takes a more personal approach: your five generations of Sims family get scrubbed from your laptop, your private middle school playlists locked under a different Spotify password. Sure, these personal examples don’t fit the traditional definition of “lost media,” but as far as we’re concerned, they’re just as lost as anything else, and they have the disadvantage of not having an army of Reddit users to help recover them. The quick and easy loss of data in the digital age is why physical, tangible forms of your favorite media are needed more than ever before.
Digital media is simply too unreliable to be something that memories are built on. When I was in middle school, I changed the password to my phone and ended up mistyping the new password two times in a row while setting it. The only solution was to completely wipe my phone.
Because I was 12 years old and an idiot, none of my photos were backed up anywhere. I was forced to say goodbye to photos of my cat as a kitten, videos of my baby brother toddling through life, and, on the bright side, audio clips of me struggling my way through a difficult cello piece — all stuff that could’ve been placed on a hard drive, or, better yet, a data-storing CD.
My stepdad, who was neither 12 years old nor an idiot, was loading his truck for a work trip once and misplaced his laptop and hard drive. A few minutes later, he found them, crunched under the back tire. Goodbye years and years of memories, many of which are completely lost to the world now with no hope of return. Although hard drives are a solid option, nothing really beats a stack of CDs with all of your childhood memories.
It may sound materialistic, but physical media is a great way to keep what’s important to us in close proximity. It’s a lot harder to forget a lovely day you spent with your friends if you have a framed photo on your desk. Albums feel more meaningful when you can flip through a lyric book, the edges thumbed by countless people before.
In 20 years, what are you going to have to show your children and loved ones? An album on your phone, confined to a 2532 by 1170 pixel screen doesn’t have the same nostalgic feel as flipping through a physical album. Our parents and grandparents were onto something with scrapbooks and photo albums.
Print out your photos, in case your drive gets corrupted and your albums get wiped. Buy physical copies of your favorite movies and video games, in case you get locked out of your Steam account or Netflix raises their prices (again). Browse stacks of mildewy records to look for your favorite 70s band. Turn the playlist that defined your sophomore year of college into a CD. (It’s really easy, actually.)
After all, people you’re trying to woo are going to be way more impressed by a CD that you spent hours toiling over, with a title lovingly scrawled in Sharpie, than a playlist that Spotify’s artificial intelligence DJ half-built for you.
