soon to be on my very own episode of the 2010 hit series of hoarding: buried alive. except i don’t know how they’re going to manage to film any of the completely non-physical items and objects i seem to be drowning in. i don’t know if i’ve never understood the internet. maybe it is just some unrealistic anxiety, but i seem to have fallen through the cracks somewhere. somewhere between understanding that the internet is a seemingly limitless resource with no ends or bounds that can hold every single last shred of my curiosity. no matter how many photos, song, lyrics, hyperlinks, restacks, etc. i seem to pile it up it somehow seems to hold them all. this i understand, this should not bother me or rest in the back in my mind as some sort of nasty secret to be ashamed of, but i totally am.

every few days while scrolling through the black-tar-heroin thick feed of reels on instagram, i will be hit with the overwhelming sense that i am a filthy disgusting little data hoarder. that me and my bundle of socials hulled up in my phone are slowly but surely creating an unliveable space for me at every waking second. some of you may not be getting this. what i mean to say is, much like the very real and tragic characters of h:ba* i too am drowning in my inability to let even the most insignificant of 20 minute recipes, crochet patterns and insufferably unoriginal memes acquiesce into the abyss of the internet.

on top of this completely superfluous ailment, there is an added layer. yes, even further into the crazy, i am also of the belief that while i am greedily shoving files and clips into the proverbial pockets of my phone, the apps or systems or ai tools that have now invaded every single godforsaken interface, are going around behind me and deleting the things that i save. i periodically dig through my bookmarks and saved files or 10 year old pinterest boards to find that the one oddly specific picture of a woman my exact size and style, wearing jorts and a baggy t-shirt with the perfect non-cropped fitting that i can never seem to attain, has vanished. i will spend 30 minutes to an hour digging and digging through these folders to find a photo that i believe the app has automatically deleted, knowing full well i could search a few keywords and find the exact same photo or video in a mere seconds. i’ll be damned if some automated system cleans up after me and throws away my precious collections of internet files that are so mass produced an unoriginal i could probably dream it up myself.

and there it is. the lie. i can’t dream any of these things up myself. or so i think. i have been chasing this particularly illusive white rabbit for some time now.

am i devoid of original thoughts and ideas or is the internet harming my ability to create?

in my mind the main culprit simultaneously inspiring and robbing me of my ideas is pinterest. not only is the app notorious for stealing the work of thousands of creatives, but, it’s also now fully engrained with amazon, the ultimate stupifyer of small creators and businesses alike. yet, i cannot seem to let go. i am deeply emotionally attached to a collection of photos that i had no part in creating or forming. the only credit i can take for this attachment is that i gathered them all there in one spot and gave them a name, and a stupid one at that. so why am i so attached?

the hoarders in h:ba always seemed to have a myriad of explanations for why they packed their house with so many belongings. most often the reason was because they felt some sort of deep emotional attachment to each individual thing they purchased. sometimes it was just old family heirlooms or miscellaneous inheritances of a passed on loved one. other times it was just one theme of items that they collected every time they went to a thrift store. sometimes documents, sometimes entire litters of stray cats, sometimes every item needed for every single hobby they’ve been stuck on even for just a moment. what makes me even more puzzled is that the only difference from the people on h:ba and some of these influencers now a days is that the hoarders never seemed to be focus on the purchasing or consuming of the item, they always seemed to be stuck on the feeling.

we don’t seem to make reality tv about people we see on social media who have over 100 amazon boxes that they need to open “for content” and to “thank their sponsors”. we don’t seem to shame or shed light on these people and their disease. we all seem completely content to watch an influencer open ten different single-use packages, tap their nails to the case, rub a fingertip’s worth of product on their face and then send the box to the complete unknown of their off-screen life. just because what’s in the frame is clean or blurred out doesn’t mean it there isn’t some insidious mass of shein bags or infinite tumbleweeds of plastic packaging lurking somewhere in the shadows. maybe i’m diving too deep, maybe the simple difference is that the influencers know to take all their boxes to recycling and not allow them to stack up in their halls and doorways, but what happens to all the stuff? of course they’re not using every item they purchase. of course we as a society have normalized the daily activity of watching 30 second to 1 minute long advertisements for hours on end, back to back, only to shriek when a youtube ad crosses in front of our other much more preferred advertising content. we’re sick. we’re fake. we’re hypocritical.

the jones’ have outrun us by a millenia, the jones’ have developed a parasitic biochemical allergen and inserted into the bodies of all the pretty people in order to eternally run the concept of keeping up with them as the biggest multilevel marketing scheme the world has ever seen. and it’s working. every time i see some cute homegirl on my pinterest with a flashy new item, purchasable or creatable, i feel hollow without it. my internet hoarding now concrete and realized with thrifted finds and the innumerable number of craft supplies i needed to make one singular item that i may not use to make something ever again. i am drowning in my collections immaterial or otherwise. so i ask, what do we do? how do i stop the ever consuming mania of hoarding every single thing i manage to find sentiment in? if y’all find out lmk.

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h:ba – shortened form of the title ‘hoarding: buried alive’