Over the last 2 years, I’ve noticed that I spend WAY more time carefully cataloguing my collections of digital media (games, anime) than actually experiencing those media.

I would spend months carefully renaming the files, grouping them into folders by franchise, creating watch order files, remuxing videos so they would only have one audio and one subtitle file, reencoding videos that I considered bloated, reencoding videos that had flac or 5.1 audio to opus stereo, putting all my files into a spreadsheet along with other information, etc. etc.

Today I realized that my obsession is pointless. I’m just wasting my life doing something that’s not enjoyable, instead of experiencing the media I’ve collected. Who am I making those neat-looking catalogues for? I will never pass on my collection to anyone. I am just lost in my unhealthy obsession instead of enjoying life.

So yeah. Today I’ve decided to stop wasting my time. I will keep archiving (because I believe that in the future, the governments will make it very difficult to share copyrighted media online), but I will stop trying to make my collection look nice and tidy.

I will also delete stuff that I’ve watched/played that I didn’t enjoy. I’ve come to a realization there’s no point archiving it if I’m never going to use it again.

Anyways, I hope this helps someone realize that obsessions with cataloguing your hoards are unhealthy and a waste of life.

  • im_making_woofles@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    renaming the files

    Can be automated

    grouping them into folders by franchise

    Should be managed in database rather than filesystem, and automated

    remuxing videos so they would only have one audio and one subtitle file, reencoding videos that I considered bloated, reencoding videos that had flac or 5.1 audio to opus stereo

    Waste of electricity and requires you to backup the file itself rather than a torrent, as you no longer have exactly what others have. Also a minor point you will kick yourself if you ever buy a surround sound setup and/or discover the wonders of headphone virtual surround

    putting all my files into a spreadsheet along with other information

    For any media category there almost certainly exists a database system that can do this for you automatically. You mentioned anime, in which case an example is Shoko

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    tl;dr you’re complaining about a problem you created, and solving the problem by scorched earth-ing the entire problem