I Collect Physical Media To Maintain History and Also Because I Fucking Love Shelves

Physical media is essential. By purchasing physical media, we are preserving history in the face of the forces that want to erase it or remove it from streaming. I am a warrior for preservation. I also just fucking love shelves.

Sure, I like movies just fine. The visuals, the writing, the direction. Those are all OK, but they pale in comparison to the greatest quality a movie can have: an expensive physical version that takes up a tremendous amount of space. I actually recently bought a 17-pound steelbook of Treasure Planet. It’s about the size of an Axis and Allies board game, and I had to build a special shelving support structure to hold it up. I might even check out that movie someday when I buy a Blu-ray player.

It started with a couple of shelves in the bookcase to store my original versions of the Star Wars movies so George Lucas couldn’t break in and destroy them. But then I bought all of The Simpsons on DVD, and I had to build my first shelf. Then just try and fucking stop me. I was off to the races.

I now own thousands of pieces of physical media featuring absurd amounts of special features that I have no real interest in. The amount of art books that I have been storing is getting ridiculous; if you want some H.R. Giger shit, I am your guy. 

The dream of physical media is being able to watch and consume it long after it is removed from Netflix or Amazon. But my true goal is getting people to comment on how many fucking shelves I have when I am on a Zoom call with them. I want to knock people’s nips right off their tits with how many shelves I have. 

Oh good, my MacGruber steelbook just arrived. I’ll need to build a new shelf for this, but my wall is in danger of being overloaded and collapsing. Whatever, one more shelf couldn’t hurt, right?

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