I’m not trying to start anything. I literally just watched a video a few minutes ago about preserving physical media and felt the itch to respond. Not to fight—just to add my voice, because it matters to me.
Short version: I love physical media and I love my digital library. I don’t want to preserve everything physically. This is a both/and conversation, not either/or.
Books raised me. Paperbacks are home. I still read fanfics on Wattpad, but my heart belongs to paperbacks. They ground me in a way an e‑ink screen never could.
With photos, I agree and disagree. I adore real albums, but paper fades and sleeves yellow. So I keep photos in more than one place: on my phone, on a drive, on a couple of old‑but‑gold flashdrives, on an SSD drive, and on my iPods, my iPad, and my collection of old iPhones. Call it hoarding if you want; losing memories hurts more. I’m speaking from personal experience.
My digital library is intentional. It’s a moodboard, an archive, a toolbox: aesthetic images from Pinterest and Tumblr for Wattpad covers, fandom pictures I actually use. I keep a lot of it on a secondhand iPod touch and back it up elsewhere. RIP WeHeartIt—you were a whole era. Tonight I’ll probably add more from Faveem, Pinterest and Tumblr.
My writing and fanfics are digital‑first. Google Drive is the hive. I export and save to other places—SSD, flash drives—and one day I might print final drafts. If a site disappears, my work shouldn’t.
Movies and TV? I like the ritual of discs and I understand the screen‑free trend, but you can reach the same destination different ways: keep files locally, play them on a TV with a cable or screen‑share, or burn them to discs if the tactile part makes you happy. If I had kids, I’d use a DVD/CD player for road trips and home nights. For preteens and younger teens, an iPod classic is perfect: music and videos, no social media. Older devices still slap; I always knew it, I feel it even more now.
Why not preserve everything physically? Space, cost, decay. Not every object deserves immortal shelf space. Digital is portable and copyable. Physical is precious. Let each do what it does best.
My quick rule of thumb: Books physical (and a digital copy if I need searchability). Photos as albums plus multiple digital backups. Writing digital‑first with regular exports; print the final if I want. Movies and TV as local files on my computer. Music lives on the iPod classic—lovingly, yes, I said it.
Right now everything lives on my computers and iPods. It’s not perfect, but it works. I’ll keep refining. Someday I want a chronological, beautifully labeled photo album of my own shots. When I make it, I’ll share pictures.
Thanks for reading. Do what works. Build the library you’ll actually use. If “both” is an option, choose both.