There was a time when you could reach the end of the internet. Or at least it felt like it. You’d scroll, you’d refresh and eventually you’d be ‘all caught up’, a signal to put your phone down and move on to something else. Now there is no end. The feed doesn’t run out, it recalibrates, learning what keeps you engaged, an infinite algorithmic loop.
Somewhere between autoplay and algorithms, consumption stopped being an active choice and became a passive one. We don’t have a say in what we watch or listen to; we drift into it through patterns of clicks, likes and shares. The result is a strange kind of exhaustion; we become overstimulated and underwhelmed with the abundance of curated content through hours of endless scrolling. The father of the web himself, Tim Berns Lee, has stressed that “that addictive algorithms cause polarisation and should be made illegal”.
So naturally we start looking elsewhere for a more gratifying hit. Not forward but back, rewinding to a simpler era of media.
Formats once written off as obsolete have quietly been making their comeback for quite some time, records, CDs, DVDs, magazines and even cassettes have now become tools of resistance against the digital age. To some, it has become a way of slowing things down, a cheat code for being able to make intentional decisions about the media we consume.
Culture tends to repeat itself in cycles, especially when people are feeling disconnected to the present, so the revival of physical media formats comes as no surprise. We yearn for nostalgia, something familiar and tangible, an escape from endless content.
But the return to physical media is more than just nostalgia. It’s all about control. About rituals. About the basic, enduring appeal of holding something in your hands and knowing it won’t vanish overnight. In an access-focused world, there is a growing demand for ownership – not accumulation, but connection. To choose something, commit to it, and stick with it.
However, as vinyl stacks grow and bookshelves fill, it’s worth wondering what exactly we’re returning to, and whether we’re actually engaging with these objects or just consuming them as part of a social performance. In an age of overconsumption even slowness can become a trend and intention a part of a new ‘aesthetic’.
Physical media could be in danger of becoming another cog in a well-oiled microtrend machine. What begins as a counter reaction to digital ‘brain rot’ and algorithm driven content could quickly turn into over consuming, rather than making intentional decisions about what you buy. Collecting vast amounts of physical media as performative props instead of something to be used in everyday life – rejecting its whole purpose of being an interactive object as owning it becomes more important than engaging with it.
The contrast becomes clearer when we look at how people used to consume media in the pre-digital era. Buying music was not an instant transaction but an experience in itself, a social event shaped by anticipation. My mum, for instance, would often visit record stores with her friends, spending time in listening booths sampling tracks before attentively deciding which to purchase.
The same goes for CDs, with my parents well-loved and used rows of albums under the stairs, a representation of their lives and personalities slowly curated over time. music shared at their wedding, played on a dazed afternoon in the garden or blasted by my older brother when he comes home to visit. Physical media has the ability to hold memory, its tangible nature serves human connection. It’s a completely different and distinct experience compared to the monotonous ease of pressing shuffle on a Spotify playlist.
The issue with streaming services in the modern day is the uncertainty of ownership. Platforms such as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney can remove your favourite shows or films without any notice, prioritising catering to audiences rather than challenging them due to the excessive abundance of choice. By emphasising consumption over collection, these corporations strip away the personal experience of deciding what to watch, instead its spoon fed through algorithms that only allude to the idea of autonomous choice. DVDs and Blu-ray discs guarantee access to cultural content without internet or subscription fees, supporting thoughtful and deliberate curation over algorithm-based suggestions.
As a child one of my favourite weekend activities was perusing the aisles of Blockbuster with my family, carefully debating what film to rent for a Saturday night, the latest Bond, a classic romcom, or sadly for my parents, the newest children’s animation (most likely Shark Tale). However, renting DVDs has become a lost art. This is why institutions such as libraries are so important, they protect access to physical media and ensure that cultural experiences remain open to everyone, not limited by cost or connectivity. With librarians acting as guides to cultural content rather than distributors.
If physical media is to mean anything, it must be more than a trend or aesthetic. Tangible media’s value lies in the way it asks us to slow down, to choose carefully, and to engage fully. Otherwise, CDs, DVDs, Vinyl’s, books, and the rest risk becoming just another extension of the very culture they seek to resist. In reclaiming these formats, the challenge is not simply to own more, but to experience more on our own terms, with genuine emotional and intellectual engagement.
