Today’s project is more e-mail decluttering and that’s a boring article. So I’m going back to the “decluttering and organizing” search on YouTube, and this time it’s another new method of decluttering. It’s almost the opposite.

I’ve written numerous times before on this site that physical media seems to be dying off and why that’s a bad thing. The studios are thrilled because that means every time you watch it on TV or a rental, ad-sponsored, or subscription streaming service, they make money. That’s why they don’t want you to own anything, and this is true for television, movies, music, video games, and even comics are trying to dip into this. The problem is, if a show or game disappears you lose it. Recently, Sony got in trouble for pulling their Discovery content, which they had no choice about as the license ended and they opted not to renew, but didn’t refund the money to everyone who “bought” something there but would now not be able to watch it, which they totally did have a choice over and went with “screw over our customers who were dumb enough to think they actually owned those copies of Mythbusters they gave Playstation money for.

Now there are video game publishers who want to you not own a game so they can continue to make money off of you by “streaming” or “subscribing” to a game rather than a physical copy or a digital download that is still yours. That’s if you don’t need server access to supposedly avoid video game piracy, only for you to not be able to play the game if the server is down. There are videos on YouTube all about games that can no longer be played even if you have the proper hardware and operating system because the server you need to play or approve the game is no longer supported.

In my capacity as a storytelling critique I’m also hearing about Disney+ altering classic movies from their own library and the recently acquired 20th Century Fox library because it didn’t meet with the current standards of certain group. I won’t get into that discussion outside of to say if you wanted the original lines and visuals from the movie as you knew them for years, sucks to be you. The “outdated depictions” tag apparently isn’t enough anymore. That’s also a problem and why physical media you own and can’t be taken away from you is better than streaming in the long run.

In the following video by Teresa’s Chaotic Corner, our hostess discusses her own journey to reclaim her movie library after learning that minimalist has a downside when it comes to your media library.

Slight correction: the canceled Batgirl project wasn’t a streaming series, it was a theatrical movie deemed so bad that David Zaslav, head of Warner Brothers Discovery (the current Warner Brothers owner this month), decided not to release it at all. I of course haven’t seen it and probably won’t since reportedly they deleted all of it, but that was a business decision based on people who have. While Zaslav has made some other questionable mistakes, Warner’s been in trouble for quite some time so it must have been real bad. Hollywood has been cancelling a bunch of projects after the various Hollywood strikes, and with another potentially coming from the teamster union, there might be even more on the chopping block.

I’ve lost comics and books from the digital landscape before. When the service Wowio closed down, I lost all of those comics that was in my digital library. There are lesser known movies, or anime dubs that have been lost to time, music by artists who didn’t get the MTV or Billboard chart love and have faded from most people’s views except mine and a few other nostalgists. Streaming is a nice way to get to see things you wouldn’t otherwise, but if you have the option, get some kind of VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray player, or find a copy of a show or movie or song or comic that will never see the light of day, and find some way to hold on to it. If the companies are not going to be stewards of our past, it’s up to us, especially if you have a favorite type of media, story, song, game, or whatever that will go away if the company can’t make money from it. There are ways to properly show your collection, or hide it and the players with the right decoration.

I’m not against streaming or minimalism, but sometimes that’s not the answer to decluttering. The goal is to make your life easier, not emptier.