> In general, I think people are way too casual about media of all kinds silently disappearing when you're not looking.

I used to be obsessed with this.

The way I saw it was the universe took billions of years of concerted effort to generate a random number that represents a unique file such as an interesting video or image. It would be such a shame if all that effort was invalidated due to bullshit YouTube reasons or copyright nonsense or link rot or whatever.

So I started hoarding this data. I started buying hardware and designing a home data center with ZFS and hundreds of terabytes to hold it all. I started downloading things I never actually gave a shit about just because they were rare and I wanted to preserve them.

I think getting married cured me of this. Now it's all moments that will be lost to time, like tears in the rain.

I still have a bit of this, but I try to be realistic that hoarding too much shit is a waste. I simply try to filter whether that is something really worth keeping. Then I save it if it’s something I’m very interested in or if it has any sentimental value to me personally.