• booty [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I've noticed this brain disease on more than one occasion and it's hard to put it into words. People valuing functional objects in a weird idealistic way where just possessing the item is good, but actually using it is bad. Because if you use it then eventually you won't have it anymore and then it'll no longer be a functional object. :monke-beepboop:

      • TillieNeuen [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I read Everyday Use by Alice Walker in high school, and it made a big impression on me. Even when I was a small child, I had that impulse to save special things for some special day, then discovered that sometimes that day never comes and before you know it, you've outgrown that special thing, or it's gone bad without ever being used. So now I make a conscious effort to fight that impulse and enjoy the things I have while I have them, not saving them for some special day that may or might not ever come.

        • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
          ·
          2 years ago

          God, Everyday Use also made a huge impression on me. Never seen someone else bring it up, but I think about it fairly often

          • TillieNeuen [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Oh cool! I've never heard anyone else talk about it either, but it's stayed with me for more than 20 years.

      • egg1916 [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Me afraid to use my weapons for their explicit purpose in BOTW because they break

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Me with my phone's brightness and battery life.

        I almost never turn up the brightness and never let the battery go below 20% if I can

        • Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Ah, the post-modern condition; trading old anxieties for new ones

          I might not need to feed livestock for field work, or be scared about a cold winter freezing me to death - but I'm worried about the battery level and condition of a half dozen devices and I need to stare at the screaming screen before falling asleep

        • Dolores [love/loves]
          ·
          2 years ago

          now they've gotten rid of all the payphones this is a genuine problem. been stranded with plenty of money at night because you need a phone to spend money for a ride

      • Budwig_v_1337hoven [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I figure it's consumerism meeting economic anxieties. Most people I see exhibiting this sort of behavior could probably afford a replacement, but not comfortably. When your identity hinges on the sort of things you have and consume (as it sort of inevitably does in hellworld), but your ability to afford these things narrows, one way forward, without abandoning this sort of consumerism-based identity formation wholesale, is switching to a sort of curatorial mindset. Where you're collecting things, instead of consuming them, where you are worried about the longevity of your products, their degradation and maintenance. Where you're anxious about something breaking all the time, a sort of ascetic, curatorial consumerism.