#mar 2020

[eggymints]

[fuckyeahalexedler]

Mar. 6, 2020 | Mar. 30, 2022

[sweet-slither-friend]

[3llygat0r]

ladies are we all stanning komaeda still in 2022. we should be !!

[ribghoul]

when u and ur sibling are both trans and all u have is each other and you love and support each other unconditionally 🥺

[onisuu]

Guess who's playing what!!! ☺

[daisiesonafield-blog]

receipt: Harry is Louis’ partner

x

[mothric]

This is going to make me sound like An Old Person, but the push over the last decade to move to digital everything - music, movies, video games, etc - makes me nervous. 

Because here is the thing. When you buy something digitally - music, for example - you don’t own the music. You don’t have it, not really. You only purchased the rights to listen to that music, on your account, on whatever platform you bought it on. You being able to listen to that music you bought is dependent on however long you have your account. And however long you have an account is dependent on however long the platform lasts. 

We like to joke that Apple and Google own everything, but if the past 40 years of technological evolution has shown us anything, it’s that every medium has its day in the sun before it gets replaced by another medium. That’s normal. 

What isn’t normal is that nothing about this medium is tangible. It cannot be preserved without first being converted to a different, physical medium.

CDs have died down in popularity (and the fact that Apple has been making laptops without CD players in order to force you to buy all your music on iTunes, thereby giving Apple even more money, infuriates me to no end), but CDs still exist and can be listened to. Records and record players have seen a resurgence because people have discovered they like the feeling of physically owning their music. Tape cassettes may be something of a relic, but you can still listen to them if you’re determined enough. You can look at them, touch them, take them apart, learn about them.

But when these digital platforms fold out and die, their content will die with them. Everyone’s accounts. All the music you liked listening to. All the video games or shows you “bought” with the push of a button. Gone. Unable to be passed on or transferred.

Because what you bought doesn’t exist. Not really. You own rights. You own a temporary contract. You own lines of code that allow you to access other lines of code. You don’t own something that can be stored somewhere, handed down, or dusted off and restored later.

This was originally just going to be a post about how much I like CDs because it’s cool to look at the album art and read the liner notes and have them in your hands. And for the record, I’m not railing against enjoying any content digitally. It serves a purpose, it’s convenient, I totally get it. I’ve bought a bunch of stuff digitally and I stream music on Spotify and Youtube daily.

BUT. Just like with anything, these things have their own limitations and drawbacks. And I’m particularly concerned about these drawbacks because digital content / ownership is so unlike the mediums that have come before it. It is 100% intangible.