Buried in digital clutter
This week, I had an argument with my laptop. It told me in no uncertain terms that it was full. 235 gigabytes full, to be precise.
How can you be full? I demanded, as this laptop is but three years old and has a long life left to live.
Full. It replied obstinately.
I cursed.
Go on then. Show me what is filling you up.
It took a moment to think about my request.
Applications 18.6 GB
Bin 11.81 GB
Documents 18.28 GB
Photos 102.22 GB
I nearly fell off my chair. 102.22 GB of photographs?! But there it was, plain as day. 15,000 photographs and over 300 videos.
Tentatively, I scrolled through some of these photographs, most of which I had not looked at in months if not years. There were four photographs of a bouquet of flowers taken from slightly different angles, pictures of sandwiches or eggs or the front, back and side of a cool building.
Dozens of pictures of me doing the exact same thing but in varying poses, so that I could ‘pick the best one’ and post it to social media. Of course, the implication that is that one might delete the not best ones, but no such luck.
Then there were the videos – quelle horreur! Fifty concert videos that I can assure you I have never once revisited, where all you can hear is my horrifically flat singing instead of the artist, with shaking footage of lots of lights and a blurred stage in the background.
If you’ve ever been to a Coldplay concert, you’ll know that during ‘A Sky Full of Stars’, Chris Martin asks everyone to put their phones away and be in the moment together. It’s absolutely lovely (although there are always some goons who can’t follow instructions), but I think all of us can relate to those moments at concerts where the artist appears and like dutiful minions we all raise our phones to capture the moment.
My shorter friends in the standing sections sometimes can’t even see the artist for the wall of phones, so have watched the performance through someone else’s screen. There was also a time where I wanted to drop kick a particularly aggravating Gen Z who kept turning the camera around (flash alight) to film herself singing along, and as a consequence also filming my friend and I who stood behind her. But I digress.
I’d thought I was restrained with concert filming, but the evidence suggests otherwise, your honour. 10-15 seconds max of my favourite songs, and enjoy the rest of it without worrying. But could I attend to a concert and just go? Resist that burning itch to take my phone out of my pocket and prove I was there?
I also realised that due to a horrendous glitch, my laptop has duplicated every single photograph I have with a slightly more pixelated version, so I now have to go through every single one of the 15,000 photographs and delete the duplicates.
But this is an opportunity that I am not going to waste. If you thought physical clutter was bad, I invite you to open your phone and question if that photograph of a pigeon you saw once needs to exist, or ten photos of exactly the same sunset two minutes apart, or see if you can delete some of your 5,000 unread emails.
Only photographs that bring me joy or capture a specific moment I’d like to remember are staying. The rest are in la poubelle.
It vexes me that digital over-accumulation not only exists, but is also encouraged. Document every moment of your day online, sign up to our marketing emails where we harass you at least four times a week, ‘pics or it didn’t happen’, and then pay a monthly fee for more storage in a magical cloud. Not on my watch, brethren.
Beyond the painful task of sifting through my memories and photographs, I will also be taking some learnings from this experience.
Firstly, stop taking so many bloody photos. It’s completely warped the way we do life – the camera eats first. We’re not remembering as much because the phone will do it for us, and I really feel we’ve lost some of the magic that came from ye olde cameras, where you took pictures then had to wait several weeks before they were developed. If we must document our lives (which I do think is a lovely thing) then surely it’s possible to do it in a more intentional, mindful way?
Secondly, although it’s going to take a lot of effort and the effects won’t be as obvious as a physical decluttering, a digital declutter is a necessary thing. Think of it like spring cleaning but for your devices! Unnecessary apps, bad or duplicate photographs (I found one I took four years ago of a cardboard box?), things you’ve downloaded but no longer need, thousands of old emails. You’ll feel better for it.
I totally need to do this… it always feels so daunting but god would it feel nice not to have so much junk on my phone!!