The resurgence of analogue culture in the midst of the digital dynasty
Lily Dykstra (She//Her) // Contributing Writer
Violet Osborne (They/Them) // Contributing Visuals
In the digital age, nothing and everything is permanent. Every message you send on any platform can come back to haunt you and every photo we post can resurface years later. But when it comes to the media we consume, corporations can change it with the click of a button.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Disney colour correcting and fixing small errors in the original Cinderella or mention of ages being removed from the newest editions of Six of Crows. If you’ve only watched Cinderella on streaming and only read the eBook of Six of Crows, these changes might go unnoticed. When everything is digital, there is no true way to perverse the originals. While the alterations are currently tame, that may not be true forever.
There’s a growing movement online to go back to DVD players and paperbacks. Some of this desire can come from digital fatigue. It can also be not wanting your music to be tied to a subscription. Or for your plane boarding pass to not be reliant on a battery that’s infamous for draining rapidly. However, much of this desire is also rooted in the fear of losing the original implication of the media. Will 1984 be rebranded as a romance? Will Guy Montag become the villain of Fahrenheit 451?
The world doesn’t tend to move backwards when it comes to innovation. The digital age is here to stay because it’s profitable and all the most important people champion it. More and more physical items are going to be taken over by a new phone app until there really isn’t a choice in the matter.
By purchasing DVDs, CDs and books, we keep ourselves grounded in the world instead of floating around in the digital cloud. We think we’re preserving the books and movies from harm, but to an extent, that almost makes them easier to alter. If there’s an abundance of something—animals, natural resources, knowledge—there’s no reason to act like it’s endangered, even if it is being hunted and used up at an alarming rate.
Over time, editions can be produced with the new unsavoury changes, until it makes up an overwhelming majority of the market. The originals could become increasingly rare, only available to those who are able to spend a hefty amount. Then potentially bought by Artificial Intelligence companies to scan, alter, and regurgitate it with whatever bias they choose and burn.
Purchasing physical media is good and can slow down these changes. But it also lulls us into a false sense of security. We forget that knowledge is being targeted when the talking heads on our tiny screens tell us it isn’t. When they promote physical media in a way that makes us feel in control, it makes us think we’ve solved the root of the issue.
Two things can be true at once. Yes, flip phones and switching to analog can give you more privacy and help offer some reprieve from the blue-lit world. But the influencer that promotes it can also only be after our trust so they can offer malicious ideas and products without us realizing the issue.
The very fact that this trend is originating from the internet indicates that we are stuck in an unescapable loop of doomscrolling and screen addictions. It’s not rooted in the real world and when you go outside, everyone is still staring at their phones on the bus and putting in their Airpods before walking between classes. The analog life we crave isn’t just the aesthetic of flipphones and DVDs. It’s a refusal to live life outside of the real world. It’s actually speaking to people, making lasting connections and embracing boredom.
Reverting back to 2000s era technology attempts to make us feel like we aren’t trapped in a cycle of doom-scrolling and relying on a screen for everything. It gives us a false sense of control over our own lives. If that is up to us to decide, maybe we’re more likely to concede to digital IDs, AI integrated into every platform and submitting to conditions we think we can do nothing about. We live in a dystopia.We have the books to prove we know what that is, but not enough of us are making a real effort to get out.