Digital Hoarder
[Whispers]: I collect screenshots, too. Like this author, I am a digital hoarder.
Upon first glance, no one can tell what I collect … My hoard instead is digital: I collect screenshots. My screenshots folder on my phone is overspilling, out of sight only by the grace of technology, organized in a neat grid of squares that sit three across.
I also screenshot text exchanges I want to keep forever, memes from Facebook that made me laugh, search results I want to remember in the future, one million screenshots of key moments in video games. My photos help me remember moments I experienced but screenshots help me remember what occupied my thoughts. She writes,
So much of our digital world feels ephemeral by nature, passing by us at warp speed, but screenshots are like little fossils preserved in amber that allow us to slow down and capture pieces of our online lives. And if memories are what make us human, then our screenshots tell a story about who we are in the digital age.
Screenshots are also more intimate than photos, as she points out, because they’re often not things we share with others. We take screenshots for ourselves. (Or to prove a point down the road.)
The only thing more telling than my screenshots are my open tabs, or the ones I finally closed after bookmarking in a folder called Tabs that I May Have Had Open for Months.
4 comments
LOL… most of my screenshots are trying to capture Older Nephew’s Wife’s photos & videos of Little Great Nephew on Instagram Stories (blink & you’ll miss it…). I wrote about my frustration with IG Stories here:
https://theroadlesstravelledlb.blogspot.com/2021/05/microblogmondays-heres-story.html
But yeah, I am a digital hoarder. E-books (take up way less shelf space than paper). I don’t save ALL my emails, but I have emails that date back to the late 1990s, from my first computer. Bookmarks: I have hundreds, perhaps thousands of sites bookmarked, organized in topic folders. I have scanned my pre-digital photos as far back as 1990 (I got my own camera in 1976, so, 14 more years to go…)(plus I copied my mom’s to a hard drive on one of my last visits there). I suppose it’s just one more form of clutter but it does take up less space than physical stuff.
I’m a digital hoarder because that stuff doesn’t actually take up physical space (well, not much, anyway – let’s not talk about the CDs and DVDs full of pictures, or the laptops that I don’t get rid of because they also have pictures even though they’re also on the hard drive.). I’m not much of a screenshotter, though – the occasional meme that I can’t save any other way or my Sudoku puzzle progress in case I make too many mistakes and get kicked out of the game. But then I go back and delete that stuff…
I’ve only recently (the last year or so) started using screenshots. They’re very handy! And yes, I’m a bit of a digital hoarder. I try and clean things out every so often. My inbox is getting away with me at the moment – and none of it is work-related! Sigh.
Oh yes. I love screenshots, and you’re right that they tell a story! I collect the same types of screenshots as you, plus sometimes things that I be know will be deleted off social media but I need to send to my best friend for a laugh or to prove I’m not nuts.