In the gay world "fat" is an ugly word. I suppose in the straight world it is too, but in the straight world those that are conscious of their weight more often than not are women. Straight men don't pay that much attention to their actual weight but focus instead on having a six-pack. In gay world however weight is a number, a statistic, and at times it seems more important to gay men in narrowing down suitors than what someone actually looks like.
This is more visible and easier to demonstrate online than in-person. The latter seems to afford some degree of lenience. When you set up a profile on dating sites however you are prompted to fill out a profile of statistics. Those statistics at the end of the day are filters. What you put is going to determine whether someone on the site even sees your profile at all. That's a bit unsettling. It means if you don't fall into a given range of "acceptability" then you're not even seen.
When you visit one of these sites it is inevitable that you will filter people like this. You see a site prompt you by saying 25,000 profiles match your criteria - the first thing you do is not to try and view them all but to narrow it down. The filters come out in force and you enter your "ideal" values for a partner. That's where the problem arises. A number is just that, a number. It's not a story, it's not an explanation, and more often than not it is not realistic, nor is it an accurate representation of the person you have pictured.
Let's say you are a 5 foot 7 inch man. If you are of average build then you'd aim to be 10 stone to 11 stone to be "healthy" according to the Body Mass Index - BMI. [1.7m, 151 lbs / 68kg]
The problem with this is that it does not factor in body type, and muscle to fat ratio. This does play a big part in determining whether the person is a healthy weight. A pound of muscle is much denser than a pound of fat. Let's take another example:
John Cena, a rather famous wrestler is just over 6 foot [1.85m], and weighs 17 stone 13 pounds [251lbs / 114 kg], according to the Body Mass Index, John Cena is Obese. Now looking at his picture you will be no means argue he is anything but Obese. He's an exquisite specimen of fitness. However if you were to see a dating profile without his picture and saw an almost 18 stone, 38 year old man, most gay men would pass without a second notion. Now you can argue if he included a picture you wouldn't - but that only assumes you get to even see the picture, those filters we mentioned earlier would automatically filter out John Cena because he's not in your ideal definition of a healthy weight.
Therein lies the problem - we apply our own standards to other people and fail to realise that what applies to us might not apply to others. We assume that because we are a certain height and a certain weight that anyone else should have the same proportions as us to be healthy - assuming we actually think we ourselves are healthy.
The question is why do we do this? In the real world we don't stop someone before they speak to us and ask them what weight they are, how tall they are, and the plethora of statistics we look for and filter by online. We don't do it in those situations but at the same time we do still narrow people down to a lesser extent in the real world. Why do we like to say no more than we like to say yes? Is it the genuine desire to reduce the possible number of people making Mr Right easier to find? Or is it something else? I've wondered about this and I have a theory. We like to reject others because it makes us feel good. The more people we say no to the "higher" we elevate ourselves. We see a site with 25,000 profiles and enter our filters and get it down to 1,000 and we feel some pleasure in thinking 24,000 people weren't "good enough" for us. We want people to be interested in us, and to be in the position to say no, because it makes you feel desirable. Dismissing those 24,000 people makes you feel good but what does it achieve?
Gay Dating Online
The internet makes many things easy. Convenience often comes at a cost though. When it comes to gay dating sites they make it easier to say no than it is to say yes - or, to be more accurate, it makes it easier to say nothing at all. There's nothing wrong with the realisation that you're not that into someone, or that they aren't what you are looking for, but in the real world if you lose interest in someone or if you just aren't interested at all then you have the obligation to show common courtesy by letting the other person know. When it comes to the online world however it's far too easy just to delete a message and never even reply. To ignore someone completely.
I have been on both sides of this, and to be honest most people are passive aggressive, they do it because they don't want to confront the other person, because inevitably they will ask you to justify your decision - something which reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons where the town joins a cult and they watch a brain washing film and any time someone stands up a spotlight shines on them and a voice says "You're free to leave but do you mind telling us why?" - this puts you in an awkward position of having to nail down feelings and emotions into concise articulations. The truth is "it just doesn't feel right" is a sentiment you can feel but in writing it leads to more questions than it answers. So instead people just avoid it all together and don't say anything at all - or block. The latter I never saw the point of, except in cases of abuse but even then it's not effective for the same simple reason - they can create another account, or in some cases the site explicitly says they have blocked you. Back in the days of MSN if you blocked someone you just appeared offline. They couldn't actually know for sure whether you were offline or whether you had blocked them.
This convenience of cowardice - and I admit that's what it is, even though I have been on both sides - is something that encourages negative behaviour in people. In the case of being the one to ignore someone, it discourages the development of effective social skills to deal with this kind of conflict and encourages you to simply stick your head in the sand and pretend it never happened. More fool us as this leaves us ill prepared to confront situations like this in the real world. If anything the physical barrier the internet provides should encourage you to learn how to do this in a safer environment. The real world is a lot more risky in terms of the threats that exist.
My experiences of online dating are limited to the gay world, so I can't comment on the straight, but I would assume the same problems exist. As for the actual process of dating online I have a fair few horror stories of my own when it comes to that, and a few that were somewhat happy, although they didn't end with the stereotypical 'happy ever after' - much to my disappointment.
I have been on both sides of this, and to be honest most people are passive aggressive, they do it because they don't want to confront the other person, because inevitably they will ask you to justify your decision - something which reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons where the town joins a cult and they watch a brain washing film and any time someone stands up a spotlight shines on them and a voice says "You're free to leave but do you mind telling us why?" - this puts you in an awkward position of having to nail down feelings and emotions into concise articulations. The truth is "it just doesn't feel right" is a sentiment you can feel but in writing it leads to more questions than it answers. So instead people just avoid it all together and don't say anything at all - or block. The latter I never saw the point of, except in cases of abuse but even then it's not effective for the same simple reason - they can create another account, or in some cases the site explicitly says they have blocked you. Back in the days of MSN if you blocked someone you just appeared offline. They couldn't actually know for sure whether you were offline or whether you had blocked them.
This convenience of cowardice - and I admit that's what it is, even though I have been on both sides - is something that encourages negative behaviour in people. In the case of being the one to ignore someone, it discourages the development of effective social skills to deal with this kind of conflict and encourages you to simply stick your head in the sand and pretend it never happened. More fool us as this leaves us ill prepared to confront situations like this in the real world. If anything the physical barrier the internet provides should encourage you to learn how to do this in a safer environment. The real world is a lot more risky in terms of the threats that exist.
My experiences of online dating are limited to the gay world, so I can't comment on the straight, but I would assume the same problems exist. As for the actual process of dating online I have a fair few horror stories of my own when it comes to that, and a few that were somewhat happy, although they didn't end with the stereotypical 'happy ever after' - much to my disappointment.
I miss True Blood
I'm a binge-watcher. When I discover a show that I like I'll watch the whole thing, or as much as I can in one go and keep it up until I've seen it all. When I first got into Game of Thrones it was to my behest, spurred on by a friend I worked with, when I watched a few episodes I was hooked and I followed through. I had to catch up at the time as the latest season was about to air and I had 3 to catch up on. I'm quite good at avoiding things entirely when I am not interested, and up until then I had no idea what the show was actually about.
I have always had an affinity for Vampire lore. I read Bram Stoker's Dracula - which I found infuriating but I think the main reason for that was because of the time period it was set in, the chauvinist attitudes were insinuating and made me seethe with the desire to slap some of the male characters, I digress - the story was frustrating too though because of how little the characters knew of vampires, but you can't hold that against the author when he was the first to create a work centred around them. Over the years though I have explored many series that focused on Vampires. From the cheese of Vampire Academy to the cream of True Blood. The latter I have been missing lately.
A few months ago I watched the first episode of The Vampire Diaries - yes, a little late to the party here too - and I liked what I watched. I made my way through the seasons but it went stale quite quickly for me. I followed through, watching every episode up to date and my over arching opinion is that this is mediocre at best. True Blood was so much better to me, but I guess the creators of The Vampire Diaries would probably have been prepared for the comparisons before they ever produced a pilot. The Vampire Diaries vs True Blood is a no-contest for me, True Blood wins hands down. The problem though is when something is good, it becomes hard to match. This is something that's been true of many things not just Vampire Serials but throughout the entertainment industry as a whole. Our expectations over time have been raised, and when we return to older works we find them hard to embrace. In the same way that returning to Bram Stoker's classic was frustrating, we find it hard to go back to simpler times.
I get this with a lot of things I remember watching when I was younger. I loved Charmed and could not get enough of it, yet last year when I took the notion of binge-watching the whole series again I couldn't make it more than a few episodes in - Nostalgia it seems is very good at making our memories far happier than the reality. I said in a previous post that I was contemplating the nature of life crises, mid and quarter, if it's true to say that our nostalgia makes things seem happier than they were then perhaps it could be true to say the same of people. Maybe we weren't as happy as we think we were, and maybe the people we miss are more-so the idea, as opposed the reality. If that's true then it would mean the reality of longing for days that have passed is even more depressing as the days you recall never actually happened - not as you imagine them anyway. Isn't that a sombre thought?
I have always had an affinity for Vampire lore. I read Bram Stoker's Dracula - which I found infuriating but I think the main reason for that was because of the time period it was set in, the chauvinist attitudes were insinuating and made me seethe with the desire to slap some of the male characters, I digress - the story was frustrating too though because of how little the characters knew of vampires, but you can't hold that against the author when he was the first to create a work centred around them. Over the years though I have explored many series that focused on Vampires. From the cheese of Vampire Academy to the cream of True Blood. The latter I have been missing lately.
A few months ago I watched the first episode of The Vampire Diaries - yes, a little late to the party here too - and I liked what I watched. I made my way through the seasons but it went stale quite quickly for me. I followed through, watching every episode up to date and my over arching opinion is that this is mediocre at best. True Blood was so much better to me, but I guess the creators of The Vampire Diaries would probably have been prepared for the comparisons before they ever produced a pilot. The Vampire Diaries vs True Blood is a no-contest for me, True Blood wins hands down. The problem though is when something is good, it becomes hard to match. This is something that's been true of many things not just Vampire Serials but throughout the entertainment industry as a whole. Our expectations over time have been raised, and when we return to older works we find them hard to embrace. In the same way that returning to Bram Stoker's classic was frustrating, we find it hard to go back to simpler times.
I get this with a lot of things I remember watching when I was younger. I loved Charmed and could not get enough of it, yet last year when I took the notion of binge-watching the whole series again I couldn't make it more than a few episodes in - Nostalgia it seems is very good at making our memories far happier than the reality. I said in a previous post that I was contemplating the nature of life crises, mid and quarter, if it's true to say that our nostalgia makes things seem happier than they were then perhaps it could be true to say the same of people. Maybe we weren't as happy as we think we were, and maybe the people we miss are more-so the idea, as opposed the reality. If that's true then it would mean the reality of longing for days that have passed is even more depressing as the days you recall never actually happened - not as you imagine them anyway. Isn't that a sombre thought?
Starting Over
I'm not new to the internet, nor am I new to blogging, but every now and then you find that urge to scrap everything and start over. Right now I am filled with that urge. I have been for a while. It's not just an impulse, this I know for sure as it has been months now for me, living with this feeling.
I was once told that in decades passed people had mid-life crises and that in the modern age with the pace of life quickening we have them sooner now. The idea of a "quarter life crisis" was something I laughed off in my early 20's mainly because I never let things weigh me down that much. I was a lot more impulsive when I was younger, I would rise to things much more than I do now. "Scrappy" is probably an apt definition but at the time I would have resented you for calling me that. As I have got older though more and more I find myself just wanting a quiet life. In doing that though I have become complacent with many things and let them mount up over time. The baggage I have gathered has been something of a burden.
I'd like to be one of those people that just drops everything and runs off to join the Tibetan Monks or goes away to find themselves. The problem is I burden myself with guilt much more than I should. I feel responsible for people and things despite the fact I am young, single, never married, have no children, have no financial commitments other than student loans and various debts I amounted over the years. As for my possessions many of them I could probably do without but I hold onto the mentality of "what is mine will always be mine" and I tend to form deep sentimental attachments to the things I keep. I have had people say to me that I no longer own my possessions, that they own me, and I must confess to an extent it is true.
This isn't a post to sit and whine about my life, and complain about how bad I have it - I have a good life, I know that. There are a lot of people that are a lot worse off than me; but the thing is, if you let the fact someone is worse off than you stop you from confronting the things that are making you unhappy you might as well resign yourself from life altogether. I don't mean to end it all, I just mean to give up caring entirely. If you weigh up the validity of your emotions by their extremity in comparison to others you will never feel anything other than moderation ever again. Why would you ever feel happiness when there will be many people out there who are far happier than you?
The point of this post is to illustrate one thing - me. This is who I am and it's the best description of me and my thought process you can get, far more than anything I could ever write to summarise my ethos in life and my interests. This is what I do, I think. Way too much at times. I think up, I think down, I think forwards, I think backwards, if you can think about it I probably have too, and if I haven't I would be eager to, so don't be shy. "Have you ever", "Would you ever", "Did you know", and "Do you think" are the best openings you could ever make in a conversation with me.
I will aim to update this blog at least once a week, more if I can manage it.
I was once told that in decades passed people had mid-life crises and that in the modern age with the pace of life quickening we have them sooner now. The idea of a "quarter life crisis" was something I laughed off in my early 20's mainly because I never let things weigh me down that much. I was a lot more impulsive when I was younger, I would rise to things much more than I do now. "Scrappy" is probably an apt definition but at the time I would have resented you for calling me that. As I have got older though more and more I find myself just wanting a quiet life. In doing that though I have become complacent with many things and let them mount up over time. The baggage I have gathered has been something of a burden.
I'd like to be one of those people that just drops everything and runs off to join the Tibetan Monks or goes away to find themselves. The problem is I burden myself with guilt much more than I should. I feel responsible for people and things despite the fact I am young, single, never married, have no children, have no financial commitments other than student loans and various debts I amounted over the years. As for my possessions many of them I could probably do without but I hold onto the mentality of "what is mine will always be mine" and I tend to form deep sentimental attachments to the things I keep. I have had people say to me that I no longer own my possessions, that they own me, and I must confess to an extent it is true.
This isn't a post to sit and whine about my life, and complain about how bad I have it - I have a good life, I know that. There are a lot of people that are a lot worse off than me; but the thing is, if you let the fact someone is worse off than you stop you from confronting the things that are making you unhappy you might as well resign yourself from life altogether. I don't mean to end it all, I just mean to give up caring entirely. If you weigh up the validity of your emotions by their extremity in comparison to others you will never feel anything other than moderation ever again. Why would you ever feel happiness when there will be many people out there who are far happier than you?
The point of this post is to illustrate one thing - me. This is who I am and it's the best description of me and my thought process you can get, far more than anything I could ever write to summarise my ethos in life and my interests. This is what I do, I think. Way too much at times. I think up, I think down, I think forwards, I think backwards, if you can think about it I probably have too, and if I haven't I would be eager to, so don't be shy. "Have you ever", "Would you ever", "Did you know", and "Do you think" are the best openings you could ever make in a conversation with me.
I will aim to update this blog at least once a week, more if I can manage it.
Turn left
There's an episode of Doctor Who where Donna Noble (played by Catherine Tate) was forced to make one simple change in her timeline, turning right instead of left at an intersection, and her entire life changed as a result. Of course during the episode everything is rectified thanks to Rose Tyler (played by Billie Piper) and she eventually turns left again and restores her timeline.
I've been thinking about this concept for a while now, more so lately after some big changes in my personal life. Some people call it the butterfly effect, where one tiny change leads to other small changes that eventually cause monumental shifts in your timeline. Like the people who have survival stories from September 11, where they missed a bus or a train or ran late and because of it never made it to work on time and likely are alive today for that sole reason.
There have been a number of points in my life where these choices have occurred for me, where one tiny adjustment would in time cause monumental shifts in the eventual outcome. The most poignant for me as it is quite literally down to a single word was when I first started school. I was 5 years old and went with my parents to the school I wanted to go to and had an interview with the Principal. Due to when my birthday fell I had a choice of which year I could start into with the school, either the class above or the class below. As was the case with so many things in my life my parents let me decide for myself and asked me to pick. I only needed to say one word, which year I wanted. I chose the class above and everything led to where I am today.
The thing that blows my mind about turning left is how different things could be if you turn right instead. If I had uttered a single word instead of the one I did and chose the class below, my life would have completely changed. I likely would never have met any of the people I did. It would have been a year later that I went to college if I even went, the same with University and from my time at both of those I know the chance that I would have mixed with anyone other than my year was very slim. I wouldn't have lived with the same people in halls of residence as I had either. The impact those changes could have made on my life is untold. As for work for that matter, as it was one of my flatmates that got me my first job, I likely would never have worked there either or even met anyone I did - consequently they went into administration after a year of me working there [through no fault of my own] so I would not have even had the chance to work there.
Outside of school and work the people I mixed with may have stayed the same for the most part, I might have even been closer to some of them than I am. Moving house would have been delayed by a year as that was purposely delayed until I finished school so that would have taken an extra year, and at that point we probably would have moved to a different house than we did.
To delve a little deeper into the dark side of my life, some of you know some of the details of what happened to me when I was younger, most of you do not. I often wonder if that would even have happened if I had made that one small change, if we would even have met. So much of who I am and the problems I have in life are inexorably linked to what happened and if you suddenly took that away my life might be completely different. I say "might", I am almost completely convinced it would. Not being so paranoid and being able to actually trust people would monumentally shift the course of my life and the decisions I made through its course.
Something to think about. Every choice has an impact on our lives no matter how big or how small they may seem in the moment, they can completely change your life.
I've been thinking about this concept for a while now, more so lately after some big changes in my personal life. Some people call it the butterfly effect, where one tiny change leads to other small changes that eventually cause monumental shifts in your timeline. Like the people who have survival stories from September 11, where they missed a bus or a train or ran late and because of it never made it to work on time and likely are alive today for that sole reason.
There have been a number of points in my life where these choices have occurred for me, where one tiny adjustment would in time cause monumental shifts in the eventual outcome. The most poignant for me as it is quite literally down to a single word was when I first started school. I was 5 years old and went with my parents to the school I wanted to go to and had an interview with the Principal. Due to when my birthday fell I had a choice of which year I could start into with the school, either the class above or the class below. As was the case with so many things in my life my parents let me decide for myself and asked me to pick. I only needed to say one word, which year I wanted. I chose the class above and everything led to where I am today.
The thing that blows my mind about turning left is how different things could be if you turn right instead. If I had uttered a single word instead of the one I did and chose the class below, my life would have completely changed. I likely would never have met any of the people I did. It would have been a year later that I went to college if I even went, the same with University and from my time at both of those I know the chance that I would have mixed with anyone other than my year was very slim. I wouldn't have lived with the same people in halls of residence as I had either. The impact those changes could have made on my life is untold. As for work for that matter, as it was one of my flatmates that got me my first job, I likely would never have worked there either or even met anyone I did - consequently they went into administration after a year of me working there [through no fault of my own] so I would not have even had the chance to work there.
Outside of school and work the people I mixed with may have stayed the same for the most part, I might have even been closer to some of them than I am. Moving house would have been delayed by a year as that was purposely delayed until I finished school so that would have taken an extra year, and at that point we probably would have moved to a different house than we did.
To delve a little deeper into the dark side of my life, some of you know some of the details of what happened to me when I was younger, most of you do not. I often wonder if that would even have happened if I had made that one small change, if we would even have met. So much of who I am and the problems I have in life are inexorably linked to what happened and if you suddenly took that away my life might be completely different. I say "might", I am almost completely convinced it would. Not being so paranoid and being able to actually trust people would monumentally shift the course of my life and the decisions I made through its course.
Something to think about. Every choice has an impact on our lives no matter how big or how small they may seem in the moment, they can completely change your life.
Common, Technical, and Existential
Alice: "I could never marry you"If you rely upon common knowledge you'll interpret this conversation to mean that Bob will die single, never having married, and that Alice would die never having married Bob but perhaps marrying someone else. That interpretation relies upon common knowledge as you infer the meaning based on what you see, hear, and think or feel. You see a conversation, you hear what is said, and you interpret meaning based on what you think it was intended to mean, or what you feel it was intended to mean.
Bob: "I will never marry anyone but you"
Some of you will have sensed where this post was headed and chose to interpret the conversation literally. Those of you who chose this option fall into the category of technical knowledge, that is to say you base your understanding of the world on what you can see and do not rely on your thoughts and feelings but rather on the logical deductions you can extract. In the conversation about you would assert that 'could' is a future conditional and as such modifies the meaning of the sentence. "Could be" implies a chance that something might happen, this is easy to follow for most people, however "Could never be" is interpreted incorrectly by most people to mean "Will never" when in reality even when 'could' is used in conjunction with 'never' there is still a chance that it may happen due to the conditional nature of 'could' therefore the logical conclusion someone of a technical mind will make from this conversation is that Alice may or may not die single, having married or not married Bob, whereas Bob who asserted "will never" commits to that fate and either marries Alice or never marries anyone.
Those of you with an existential mind will have ignored the common and the technical interpretations entirely and instead posed a series of questions in an attempt to determine a more resolute answer to the question being posed. That is to say those of an existential mindset discard assumptions and thoughts and feelings entirely and instead look for evidence, and past experiences to draw upon to form a conclusion. Those with this mindset would have asked first why Alice said what they did, and whether or not they meant it. Whether the conditions that led them to say it could change in time and whether that could change the possible outcome. In short those of an existential mind dismiss the statements entirely and state that no knowledge can be extracted from the conversation.
Which of these three mindsets you rely on most gives an insight into you as a person and your thought process. Simple parallels can be drawn to say that those who were common minded would be the most social and least academic, those who were technical would be the most logical and calculating, whilst those who were existential would be the most artistic and creative from all three.
The problem is as can be demonstrated by the fact you know so little about Alice and Bob other than their names, is that we make assumptions. Without knowing all the information there is to know there are no conclusions that can actually be conclusive, everything is speculation. The truth is until both Alice and Bob die and the outcome is then immutable, there can be no conclusion drawn that is binding. There are many pieces of information that can not be derived from what you have read alone, you can't assert gender for example, beyond gender normative assumptions based on the names. You can't assert age either, and a more interesting one, you can't even assert species or classification for either Alice and Bob, you assume they are human because they can speak but even at that there are many animals that can mimic speech, and there are robots and computers that can be programmed to do so too. When you begin to think about what you do not know you realise how much of our daily lives we base on assumptions, and how little we actually think about we see, hear, and do.
Forget it
About two weeks ago one of my hard drives crashed. Without warning, it just quietly died. My first reaction was disappointment followed by frustration as I started the long list of possible reasons it died. It's an external hard drive so there are a few things I had to rule out. After going through the list there's only one possible reason left and to verify it I had to order some spare parts online. They haven't arrived yet but if they don't work then the drive is lost to me and all the data on it.
There was about 500 GB of data on the drive, and initially the big things that have been lost sprang to mind, ISOs for various pieces of software I use - some of those are backed up thankfully, some are not. My entire music collection which was about 15 GB that was perhaps the first thing I thought of, some of it I can get back from iTunes, and the physical stuff too but a lot of it I can't get back - not through any legal means. For the music at least I've resorted to Spotify for the time being. The things that have hit home the hardest though are the things you can't replace. Photos and Videos mainly of people, places, and things from years gone by.
I know what you're thinking - it's my fault for not backing it up. Well the thing is, the hard drive was the backup. A few months ago I backed everything up to it before upgrading to Windows 10, I deleted partitions on my hard drive and moved things around then installed Windows 10, since then I hadn't got round to copying everything back onto the PC, partly because I was unsure of Windows 10 at first and partly because it was more convenient to keep it on the external drive.
What has been lost though is quite a lot of irreplaceable data. Beyond the photos and videos I mentioned, everything from my University years, and my College years was on it, both work and play. There were also a lot of things I wrote, as some of you will be aware I am a writer, I do write much more than this blog. The published works at least I could get back from Amazon Kindle's Publishing centre so I have copies of those, but it was the unfinished, and unpublished work that I lost, including a novel I've been writing for the last 2 years. I have older copies of it backed up in other places but I've lost the last 6 chapters or so because I neglected to update the backups.
This whole experience has made me re-evaluate what data I hold onto myself. I used to be quite against cloud storage but reluctantly I have moved to it now for some data that's not confidential as such. One of the more unusual things I lost in this experience is people. I don't keep every phone number I ever had in my phone, the people I didn't speak to anymore I deleted from the phone long ago. Their numbers however were in a spreadsheet and there's no prizes for guessing where that was saved. To be clear none of the numbers I lost were people I contact regularly anymore. It's interesting for me to sit and ponder though that without those numbers I have now been completely cut off from them. For a handful that's for the best. For the rest I don't know what to think. For a few I am down about losing, but at the same time the fact that we haven't spoken in a while is telling me to let it go.
To give a rough idea of figures, I have made some estimations:
Music: 5,000 mp3 files roughly, this isn't my entire music collection as I had deleted a tonne a while ago.
Writing: This one is harder to estimate, my shortest novel is 10,500 words roughly and there's a few others, coupled with archived blog posts [from other blogs no longer active] plus my coursework from University, College, and my dissertation. In all I would estimate around 1 million words of writing would be conservative.
Photos: This is about 1,000 which thanks to my social media abstinence [with the exception of Twitter] can't be found anywhere else.
Videos: These were never uploaded there weren't many, about 10 if even that.
Software: The biggest chunk of this is about 50 GB of Microsoft applications I got for free from Microsoft through MSDNAA which you can't access anymore once your account closes after graduation so I can't recover any of this.
Phone numbers: There's about 100 of those, but in all honesty I am not that fussed about the majority, we haven't spoken in years anyway and it's unlikely I would have contacted them. There's about 10 guys though I feel sad about losing. One or two I had crushes on, one or two I was a lot closer than that with at one point but we drifted apart for various reasons. One of them made it quite clear he didn't want to speak to me again anyway.
This is where the question of forgetting things comes into play. There's a lot I have lost because of this but a lot of it is just data that I was holding onto - hoarding if you will. For the music at least, Spotify is doing its best right now, I've even discovered some new music with it which has managed to lift my spirits to the point where I am considering paying for premium - I'm not entirely sure it's worth it for me though as the adverts aren't that invasive after a while you forget about them. The things I wrote I can write again, they may not be as good, they may be better, they will be what they will be. The memories of the people and places I went to will remain even if I don't have the photos and videos anymore. In a way this is making me question the permanence of digital data versus the fading of memory - we forget the things that aren't that important, maybe some data should be the same, maybe you should just forget it.
There was about 500 GB of data on the drive, and initially the big things that have been lost sprang to mind, ISOs for various pieces of software I use - some of those are backed up thankfully, some are not. My entire music collection which was about 15 GB that was perhaps the first thing I thought of, some of it I can get back from iTunes, and the physical stuff too but a lot of it I can't get back - not through any legal means. For the music at least I've resorted to Spotify for the time being. The things that have hit home the hardest though are the things you can't replace. Photos and Videos mainly of people, places, and things from years gone by.
I know what you're thinking - it's my fault for not backing it up. Well the thing is, the hard drive was the backup. A few months ago I backed everything up to it before upgrading to Windows 10, I deleted partitions on my hard drive and moved things around then installed Windows 10, since then I hadn't got round to copying everything back onto the PC, partly because I was unsure of Windows 10 at first and partly because it was more convenient to keep it on the external drive.
What has been lost though is quite a lot of irreplaceable data. Beyond the photos and videos I mentioned, everything from my University years, and my College years was on it, both work and play. There were also a lot of things I wrote, as some of you will be aware I am a writer, I do write much more than this blog. The published works at least I could get back from Amazon Kindle's Publishing centre so I have copies of those, but it was the unfinished, and unpublished work that I lost, including a novel I've been writing for the last 2 years. I have older copies of it backed up in other places but I've lost the last 6 chapters or so because I neglected to update the backups.
This whole experience has made me re-evaluate what data I hold onto myself. I used to be quite against cloud storage but reluctantly I have moved to it now for some data that's not confidential as such. One of the more unusual things I lost in this experience is people. I don't keep every phone number I ever had in my phone, the people I didn't speak to anymore I deleted from the phone long ago. Their numbers however were in a spreadsheet and there's no prizes for guessing where that was saved. To be clear none of the numbers I lost were people I contact regularly anymore. It's interesting for me to sit and ponder though that without those numbers I have now been completely cut off from them. For a handful that's for the best. For the rest I don't know what to think. For a few I am down about losing, but at the same time the fact that we haven't spoken in a while is telling me to let it go.
To give a rough idea of figures, I have made some estimations:
Music: 5,000 mp3 files roughly, this isn't my entire music collection as I had deleted a tonne a while ago.
Writing: This one is harder to estimate, my shortest novel is 10,500 words roughly and there's a few others, coupled with archived blog posts [from other blogs no longer active] plus my coursework from University, College, and my dissertation. In all I would estimate around 1 million words of writing would be conservative.
Photos: This is about 1,000 which thanks to my social media abstinence [with the exception of Twitter] can't be found anywhere else.
Videos: These were never uploaded there weren't many, about 10 if even that.
Software: The biggest chunk of this is about 50 GB of Microsoft applications I got for free from Microsoft through MSDNAA which you can't access anymore once your account closes after graduation so I can't recover any of this.
Phone numbers: There's about 100 of those, but in all honesty I am not that fussed about the majority, we haven't spoken in years anyway and it's unlikely I would have contacted them. There's about 10 guys though I feel sad about losing. One or two I had crushes on, one or two I was a lot closer than that with at one point but we drifted apart for various reasons. One of them made it quite clear he didn't want to speak to me again anyway.
This is where the question of forgetting things comes into play. There's a lot I have lost because of this but a lot of it is just data that I was holding onto - hoarding if you will. For the music at least, Spotify is doing its best right now, I've even discovered some new music with it which has managed to lift my spirits to the point where I am considering paying for premium - I'm not entirely sure it's worth it for me though as the adverts aren't that invasive after a while you forget about them. The things I wrote I can write again, they may not be as good, they may be better, they will be what they will be. The memories of the people and places I went to will remain even if I don't have the photos and videos anymore. In a way this is making me question the permanence of digital data versus the fading of memory - we forget the things that aren't that important, maybe some data should be the same, maybe you should just forget it.
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