Just think. At least you can sell off those nick-nacks. What value is there in digital goods you don’t want?
sbv@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Keep in mind that your descendents probably won’t care about a huge majority of what you leave them. Photos annotated with a date, time, people in them, and an explanation, maybe, but generally my generation hasn’t given a shit about the tonnes of books, music, photos, furniture, knick knacks, and antiquities bequeathed to us. It would be bizarre if our kids didn’t maintain that tradition.
Eggyhead@lemmings.world 10 months ago
sbv@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Nobody wanted my grandparents collected crap. Or their photos. Or their books. I tried giving them away. I tried consignment. I tried posting them on Facebook. Most ended up in a landfill.
Eggyhead@lemmings.world 10 months ago
Hadn’t thought of it like that. I wish I could at least donate my digital library, though.
sbv@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Yeah - I’m totally for full, real, actual ownership of digital stuff, and we should be able to give it away.
But I’d be surprised if my kids would be interested in more than a tiny fraction of it. Or anyone else, for that matter.
turmacar@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I think it would be interesting to have some kind of global archive. Even if descendants don’t care “now” has the potential to be the beginning of the best documented era in history. Historians would kill for photographs by random average people from any other time.
A lot of people thought that that’s what the Internet would be, but that’s obviously not the case. And I know the “right to be forgotten” is a thing, and deservedly so, but at some point you’re throwing out the wine with the amphora.
catloaf@lemm.ee 10 months ago
No, we do have that. Social media is a gold mine for analysis, both for modern sociology and for future archaeology.
sbv@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Doesn’t archive.org provide that?
turmacar@lemmy.world 10 months ago
In theory yes, but not a lot of people are uploading their family photo albums AFAIK.
catloaf@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Yup. My parents aren’t even in ill health, let alone dead, but we recently took all the old VHS tapes, including a lot of OTA recordings, and a significant number of DVDs, and dumped them. Recordings of talking with relatives got digitized, same way you’d keep family photos.
I have no expectation that people keep my junk. I’ll pass on a handful of stuff like identifying photos of people and places, but nobody wants or needs the 500 photos of my cat. Even I don’t want that many, but storage is cheap enough that I don’t bother to delete the useless ones.
thejml@lemm.ee 10 months ago
My wife’s parents recently passed. It took months to slog through their stuff and my wife was over it only weeks in. She dumped so much but constantly fights with herself for both taking more than she wanted/needed to and yet less that what she feels she should have. We’ve told our daughter multiple times “our stuff May mean a lot to us, it doesn’t have to mean anything at all to you. If you don’t want it, never feel bad dumping/selling/letting it go.” Out of all the stuff we all collect in life just by living, barely anything has any sentimental value.
On one hand I’ve got a huge collection of photos and albums I’ve taken and collected. I’m trying to clear some out as I go… but I’m not looking forward to that process when my parents go. My dad’s an avid photographer and I know he has a few hundred thousand photos, most of which are near duplicates and he rarely cleans them up.
sbv@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I’m trying to curate a few hundred photos for my kids. I’ve written a couple of bios of relatives. I’d like to record something like a story for them. If they want to trash it, that’s fine, but at least there will be something meaningful for them if they want it.
Assuming it survives the climate wars. 🫠
MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 10 months ago
but nobody wants or needs the 500 photos of my cat
You only have 500 photos of your cat? Is your camera broken? Got the cat yesterday?
Goretantath@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Pretty sure theyd love a literal metric shit ton of free and cracked content that fits ontop of their pinky nail.
sbv@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
My kids aren’t really interested in the movies I like. They actively avoid the music I listen to. I’ve gotten them copies of the books I love and they give up after a few pages. They get bored with the games I played as a kid.
My dad loves Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the Whole Earth Catalog, and Bruce Springsteen. I do not. If he wills me his copies, I will keep some out of guilt and then my kids will have to throw them away.