Hoarding Shows

I'm not referring to the reality show or the various spin-offs and related "educational" shows from A&E or the Discovery Channel. Long before the Internet was considered normal or "common" (the thought of it still amazes me), people have been hoarding things from stamps, trading cards, books, 8-track/cassette tapes, VHS/DVDs and anything else worth collecting. Like many, I'm a hoarder.

I can't pinpoint a specific time when I started collecting things, but I started young. I collected stickers and street vendor plastic toys (Street fighter figure molds and various indiscernible cartoon characters of my youth). When I started getting allowance, I saved up my money for Christmas gifts and spent the rest on collecting other things.

I remember the girls in my elementary class collected stationary and stickers. The guys got into collecting Basketball cards and Magic: the Gathering cards. Trading cards were off my budget at that age. I didn't even bother to ask my mom to get me one of them. They were ridiculously expensive. My siblings and I did collect X-Men and Power Rangers trading cards. Both shows were on at the same time. Many companies cashed in and started selling not-so-obvious-then-as-a-child knockoff trading cards. We also collected Pogs. The local Coca-Cola company were doing promotions to exchanging bottle caps for Pogs. We had lots of them. We gave them all away to our cousins prior to moving here in the US.

That's when I started collecting Basketball cards. They were cheap here compared to the US. Currency and market value aside, I collected them in middle school. I think these were the only collections I remember hoarding solely for the fact that my classmates in elementary school had them. I think it's human nature to want to fit in, even when my classmates were already half a world away. Of course, most kids my age at the time in the US were not concerned with Basketball cards. Only die-hard fanatics and collectors were into them. I found myself getting into videogames.

I wouldn't say I'm a videogame hoarder. I don't have the latest copy of every single game out there or any of the popular ones. My attitude towards them is a form of hoarding. Before Xbox achievements and Playstation trophies, I was beating games and obsessed with absolution: 100% completion of collecting in-game items, objectives, hi-scores, hidden extras, etc. Then again, I was in middle school going on high school. I had all the free time in the world. Middle school and high school was a breeze. I had anime, cartoons and various TV shows that I constantly watched. This was before they started selling DVDs and box sets of TV shows (unheard of at the time). Once companies figured out there's a market for box set TV shows, I almost became a box set hoarder. I already had box sets of Dragonball Z sagas in VHS form. They took up too much space. I opted out of hoarding shows, to a point. Then Napster happened.

Napster redefined how people consume entertainment. It was a conduit for sharing music as MP3 files. Not long before that, cable internet became a thing. Faster download and upload speed. Everything was pointing digital. I know a previous boss with a huge library of songs in the hundred gigabyte range. That's hoarding right there. As of now, I only have about 40GBs worth of songs in various music file formats. They are mostly songs I've heard on the radio or online, videogame music and soundtracks. Digital format took hoarding to a new level. My biggest digital collection so far are TV shows. I have collected a lot of shows. It's not as bad as some people having their own server farms with multiple terabytes of data, but it's hoarding nonetheless. Right now, I'm on the fence on one show, which is why I started this post to begin with.

I've been collecting this show since college. Right now, I have FiOS internet. There should be no reason for me to hoard these shows. I can just find some shady website streaming these shows for free. Part of me still want to keep them. It's an irrational reaction. For me at least, there are memories tied to them. Maybe it was the feeling I felt watching these shows. Maybe it was the feeling I felt why I had these shows in possession. When it comes to hoarding, my biggest collection so far are my memories. It's both a gift and a curse. So is it worth deleting 10 years of data and memories? Maybe I'm scared I'll forget.

I'm done.