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Comment by borski | Hacker News Reader

"You don't just throw your letters in the trash. You might want them some day."

Maybe it's just me, but I actually /do/ throw my letters in the trash. I /do/ treat Twitter, etc. as ephemeral and passing. I don't care about saving those messages. Am I the only one?

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It's not just you. My fear is opposite to the one the author describes: That by using these services, all these messages that I treat as ephemeral are actually being recorded forever, and 20+ years from now something I said offhand to a friend or a stranger will be used to embarrass or discredit me.

Unless you are a very prominent politician or on track to become one what do you care? I don't know... I more or less stand by what I have to say or I can honestly say that when I said it I was "young and stupid".

Social media account activity materially affects the prospects of many people who aren't politicians, especially if you engage in any controversial discussion. It's common for employers to name-search you and peruse your social media history, especially in careers that involve children like teaching, where naive new teachers are often terminated for putting child-inappropriate content on their public profiles, or getting linked to something they thought they'd shared anonymously.

"I was young and stupid" only works if the content in question is trivial or unimportant. If you happen to be on the opposite side of a political debate long since settled, you may end up getting yourself pwned pretty hard, even if you're not a politician.

Sure. However, then either watch what you say when using your real name or use a pseudonym. I don't always succeed, but I try to only say things online that I would say to the person IRL. That makes me think twice about it. I like to think that if someone was to look back through my comments or sites like HN where I use my real name, they would think that I am a reasonably reasonable human being.

Or perhaps more commonly to build a complete picture of you, including your movements, contacts and social network spanning decades, which will be sold on a grey market, so that companies can more easily exploit your fears and foibles to sell you things you don't need, and target your dreams for monetisation.

Even if no-one needs to discredit you, an entire history of you will always have value, and companies like Google, Apple and Facebook will have unique access to it.

Yeah, I don't save or back up anything; but I accept that I'm in the tiny minority. When I see how much anxiety it causes other people to have to keep track of their stuff, I'm thankful though.

I don't care about SMS, because it's mostly just my girlfriend asking what time my train gets in every day. But if I were ten years younger, it would totally make sense to save them, in the same way that I currently have archives of all my email and AIM conversations.

> but I actually /do/ throw my letters in the trash

You still send and receive letters? Somebody sits down, puts pen to paper and writes a letter? Folds it, puts it in an envelope, adds postage, and mails it?

Outside of hokey "Christmas letters" (typed once, printed, and mailed to many), I haven't seen a real letter in many years.

I'd say I envy you, but then someone else would reply and tell me that if I like letters so much I should send one. And I suppose I should, but I know I won't. I'll send an e-mail.

In any case, if I got letters I wouldn't throw them in the trash.

> Somebody sits down, puts pen to paper and writes a letter? Folds it, puts it in an envelope, adds postage, and mails it?

------------------

I do. Largely because people use so few of the things. It doesn't get mixed in as a contact from some email address you've never seen before with 15-100 other emails that someone might get in a day.

If it's someone I know and correspond with regularly, then email, sure. Convenience takes precedence over distinctiveness in that case. But when I get a non-personal contact, for instance from a business or a friend of a friend asking about something, I still take the time to put the response on paper.

I feel oppositely. If someone sends me a letter, I consider it to be an unnecessary inconvenience. If they want a letter in return, that's almost asking too much. It feels rude. You're taking up my physical space and cluttering my home. You know what I get in the mail? Advertisements that get tossed into the dumpster on the way back to my apartment and physical notices of bills from companies that won't keep up with the times. If you send me a letter, you're placing yourself in the same categories.

I don't keep stamps around. I don't keep envelopes. It's the same as if someone wants me to give them a money order. I have to go out of my way to get one, when I could just as easily do a bank transfer or PayPal et al. My mailbox is a long walk from my apartment, and when I check my mail (once a week), it's all just advertisements addressed to "current resident".

So I guess the point is, don't assume a letter will be well received, especially by the younger generations living in apartments. I don't want you to call me, I especially don't want you to leave a voicemail, and for all that is holy, don't send me a letter.

Yes I did with my grandma until she passed a year and a half ago. I have about 2 of these letters but thats enough for me.

Not at all. I suspect that I'd want to save:

- 50% of photos

- 5% of emails

- 1% of chats

- selective tweets and links I come across.

Definitely not everything.

But how do you know which n% ahead of time?

Not at all. By default, all online conversations/letters/etc are trashed. Occasionally, if I have a technical conversation with somebody I will save it for reference. I may also save a letter from somebody if it has sentimental value.

Life is too short to be overly concerned with (most) old conversations/letters/etc. when you could be out engaging in new conversations and creating new memories.

I have always treated IM and the like as phone calls. I don't keep tape back ups of every phone call I have ever made, once the conversation is over, no one should have a record of it. (in a perfect world this would include the communications provider and the NSA...but alas...)

No. I find I'm happier when I let go of all of that stuff. Trying to hang onto everything just leads to stress and worry that I'm not managing to keep everything. Or that it's not perfectly organized, or that it's not adequately searchable.

No. But then I don't like taking pictures of myself and friends holding alcoholic beverages while grinning stupidly into the camera either, which I noticed is somehow popular.

I get text messages for all sorts things, such as calendar reminders, CC use, server jobs that have completed.

I was thinking to delete the CC and reminder messages, but then I thought it might be fun one day to do some self-archaeology and look back over them. "Oh, that's when I bought that book; Oh, yeah, I never went to that event. Wow, that long ago?"

I realize that this information is available in other places but the simple timeline of messages might make it interesting in some odd way.

Nope. Unless it's something I need to keep around (taxes, insurance, usual "business of life" things,) I don't keep any of my email, messages, etc. for more than a few months at best. Nostalgia can prove to be an enemy of progress, and not having a lot of things to look back on keeps me focused on the future.

Nope, not just you. I consider it digital hoarding in a lot of ways. I keep a lot of emails around as they're actually useful to reference at later times and easily searched and archived. But IM, Twitter, IRC, Facebook, SMS, etc I treat as passing and never look at messages further than a few weeks back.

Depends. I throw out most cards I've received and wouldn't care about saving SMSes, but I do want to keep emails for reference and would want to save tweets and especially Instagram photos. Online chats I wouldn't care about and have no expectation of storing.

Things like forum updates and twitter spam and such, I delete immediately, but everything else I save. Years and years of email for me adds up to about 20MB (compressed), minus pruning of attachments. 20MB is practically free, and who knows, I might want it some day.

Nope. I too treat some conversations as ephemeral. Chats mostly fall in this category. Lengthy letters fall in a different category which is stored and backup.

Do you operate on a bigcorp-IT-style "all email older than 90 days gets deleted" policy as well?

Absolutely. Throw away as much as you can. > you want to save them forever Nope, very wrong.

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