[delayed]

Just to be clear, they've named the subreddit after a mental disorder, which I think sorta proves his point :P

Maybe hoarding is the name of a mental disorder, but it's also like, a verb.

In defence of data-hoarding, it's relatively benign apart from maybe costing time and money, but then so do a lot of hobbies. Hoarding seems to be celebrated when it's billionaires hoarding wealth, even though the billionaires typically use their wealth in the most harmful and damaging way possible.

To be sure, I am probably more like a casual data hoarder—only hoarding files I will revisit (I have a TV app I wrote that plays these videos on a schedule—a lot like these "HN TV" sites we've been seeing vibe-coded lately).

But it does take a non-zero amount of time to copy/paste a URL and then move the files to external storage when my laptop gets heavy with data.

And while it does feel a bit like a mental sickness (really, sickness?) I have other behaviors like spending too much time on YouTube in general that unfortunately would persist whether I was hoarding or not.

I do try to walk away from the browser more these days—limit it to a few hours in the morning and then when I am eating lunch or whatever during the day.

I don't think that really counts as hoarding.

Hoarding is more getting hold of data/films/tv/music that you're not expecting to get around to watching, but feel like you want a copy or that it is of cultural relevance.

e.g. I grabbed a copy of Sátántangó due to it's fame/importance, but I'm unlikely to sit through 7 hours of it.

Or more recently, I grabbed a better quality copy of the original Green Hornet series that I'm not going to bother watching.