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Collecting vs. Overconsumption

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Sorcer:
Lately I've been watching YouTube videos discussing harmful trends on social media, especially TikTok, and two particular examples related to this topic of this thread are the "TikTok made me buy it" and haul cultures. I wasn't really aware of how prevalent these are, as I'm (gladly) not involved in this side of social media, but it made me wonder how it relates back to the kind of collecting popular in geek/fan spaces. I thought "Are my toys and enamel pins really that different from fast fashion and Stanley cups?"

Is this the kind of thing you've pondered before? Feel free to discuss.

BlazingCobaltX:
Yes, this is something that I have pondered and it's what influenced me to maintain modest collections. The real learning experience was when I went to Japan and bought way too much Pokémon merch out of excitement. Coming home I realised I wasn't passionate about half of what I had bought...

Now, I try to keep and collect only the things I really love, and quickly get rid of things I am no longer interested in. This actually grew into a second hand hobby, regularly selling but also buying stuff on second hand marketplaces.

Aside from the physical plane, there's also data collections-- or rather hoards. I thought our family collection of 1TB was a lot, until I saw people talking about how they manage their 10TB collections. I find that a bit concerning. The more data you hoard the more hard drives you have to buy, the more electricity is spent on keeping your media servers online... These investments seem rather wasteful. Is something really a collection when you are just hoarding whatever (physical or digital) without conscious thought?

j:
i used to really be into Doctor Who as a kid. my mum's a hoarder and i've thankfully learned to escape that habit. still, there's chests full of old toys in my room that i can't clear out because they'll either "be worth something in the future" or "might be nice for my future kids" - even though i don't want kids and i'm happy living without huge sums of money. i love my mum dearly, but it's very difficult to approach any of this with her.

i think i underconsume, if anything (though i don't think that's a bad thing). i try to be ecologically-conscious and orient myself around taking only as much as i need from the environment and preserving what i do take as best i can. i don't think toys and enamel pins are inherently evil as much as their mass production is. i'm not the most clued up about the logistics of consumerism, but i imagine haul cultures would be less of a thing if items were made to order Just in Time, especially if they were to cost more as a result.


--- Quote from: BlazingCobaltX ---I thought our family collection of 1TB was a lot, until I saw people talking about how they manage their 10TB collections. I find that a bit concerning.

--- End quote ---

this resonates with me. my friend has a large cardboard box full of variously spaced unused drives which he picks up second-hand from scrapyards. he likes tinkering with hardware; ergo having backups in case things fail. still, that's a lot of tech that could be used by other people who can't afford to buy it first hand. i don't think it's bad that he buys tech like this (it's his special interest and his money after all!), but having a conversation about all of this was useful for both of us. i guess sometimes it takes another person to introspect!

i try to keep my file system under 1GB - which has worked pretty well for me. i find that, as a file system grows larger, it becomes more unmanageable.

anyway, that's my 2 cents of waffle :)

night-at-the-musian:
I have pondered this before, and my answer comes down to 'no'. I don't tend to buy mainstream geek stuff like Funko Pops or blind bags. In fact, I only actively pursue Nendoroids, and very rarely at that. Most of my geek stuff is fanmade, purchased from the artists directly in convention environments. In a purely monetary sense, it all goes to the artist.

Now, there IS a problem in geek and academic spaces with overcollection. It's not just plastic figurines - it's also books, which libraries and auction houses have to sort through, and some get thrown out regardless. There's an air of preservation to it, in that if you have it, it's safe from things like fire and mold and theft. It's delaying the inevitable, nothing last forever after all, but it comes from a good place. It can spiral into overcollection very easily if not kept in check.

Communities of collection like the Lost Media Wiki tend to mitigate this by turning the collection process into a group effort. They share the hoard of knowledge and media and items as a collective, and all of them bear the fruits of their labor with the world rather than hide it in a box or basement. It's all interesting to think about, and makes me wonder what IRL museums have in their archives that the public can't see. As an aspiring archivist, it's one of those things that fascinates me thoroughly.

ThunderPerfectWitchcraft:
I would argue, since you asked, that geek vinyl figures aren't much different from cloth hauls. Both are, in my opinion, an attempt to build identity through consumption. In capitalist societies, people often lack the time to seek transcendence through their own doings; they are alienated from their daily work, but lack the time to pursue things that they believe in. To surrogate for their need of self-realization, the capitalist system offers them to built individuality through the purchase of fetishes - cloth, figurines, pictures, but also cars, beverages, etc. I would say that I believe that this neither work nor satisfy the people, but since it is aggressively promoted and - as an easy way - quite tempting, one is fast to fall into this trap. Even though I'm aware of the mechanism, I often fall prey for it - I've especially much more music instruments than I can realistically play with my time available. The collateral damage is often the consumers themself, the people who produce, and/or the environment that is exploited.

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