This thread has honestly been a little upsetting/eye-opening to me. I detest the thought of hoarding, but I do like to have "my little collection" (mostly a bunch of old gaming odds & ends from my childhood, although a decent amount of things I've "reclaimed" on ebay ). I've got a box full of NES carts, a box full of Genesis games, a drawer full of TG-16 games.. about 5 or 6 of the old Coleco Tabletops, a Pac-Man game-watch and some other LCD things, a bunch of other off-brand weirdo handhelds (GCW Zero, GP32, etc). I could probably stand to just throw out a few ancient non-working smartphones, probably a couple VR headsets that I'm sure will never see use again.
Yeah I have a bunch of this stuff filling up my room, it makes me happy to see a lot of it lying around but a lot of it also just winds up being clutter, mentally and visually. Even the stuff that is stowed away in boxes, you still know it is there, it is both comforting but also kind of anchoring in a way that's probably not too wonderful. I remember going through some difficult changes in my life a long while ago, and just grabbing a bunch of.. OLD SHIT and just tossing them in the garbage with frustration and moving on. It felt kind of freeing at the time, and honestly in the years since I am still a but mixed in how I feel about it ("it's good that I got rid of that stuff, I have enough junk/I kinda wish I had held onto it").
I feel like I am at a point of my life right now, and it's been this way for awhile, where I've mostly "topped off" my collection and don't really need much else. I have a little wishlist of some trinkets I'd love to get my hands on (An original Mario Bros Game & Watch! A vintage Colecovision! That little orange Transformer guy who looks like a Tron Lightcycle!) but if it never happens, that's totally fine. Probably one day I will snap again & get rid of my existing pile of stuff, but ideally I could just give a bunch of it to someone younger who'd actually appreciate and treasure it (not just parcel it out to sell it off to OCD completionists or whatever). Although at some point I probably won't even care what happens to it all anyway.
Digital hoarding is a whole other thing. Back in the day (20+ years ago) I was VERY into "getting my hands on as much digital content as possible.." Not so much modern games of the day, but roms for all the 8 and 16 bit systems, plus MP3 from FTP sites, grabbing movies off file sharing services, etc. It was just this exciting new world, the relative thrill of the hunt was just addicting. I haven't had such interests in a very long time, and none of that stuff really holds any interest anymore (why collect MP3s when every song ever is accessible on Youtube?) I have no problem paying for some kinda service that gives me access to content (movies, music) so long as it doesn't feel like it's a rip-off. I don't need to "own a copy of it" for the most part. I DO have a couple of folders on my PC filled with probably some THOUSANDS of bookmarks that have been dragged to my desktop and eventually sorted into subfolders (oh here's an interesting wikipedia page... here's a cool youtube video about the history of this band.. here's a cool video about WW2 fighter pilots, etc.. here's 30 different youtube series about character rigging in 3DS Max, or writing shaders for Unity, and so on). I am sure plenty of people do the same, and how many of us ever actually return to peruse any of that stuff? (well some of the 3D stuff I have to, haha)
Anyway, interesting food for thought, and gets me to look in the mirror, so thanks for that OP. Hopefully by the time I get around to the point where I am seriously considering buying, say, an old upright arcade cabinet or pinball machine or something, this thread will pop up into my head and I'll think "do I REALLY need to start collecting this kinda shit too?"
