Why Am I Buying DVDs All of a Sudden?

Working my way through what my nostalgic obsessions have meant, and why this one is a little different.

I wrote in my introductory post that I’m hoping to use this as a space to work out my thoughts on my relationships with technology and social media. Check it out!

I’ve always been a nostalgic person. It’s fueled a number of fixations in my life — usually related to things that predate me by a long while. As a kid, I collected wheat pennies along with the little books you’d put them in to denote what year they were from. I’d sit in my room and hold them, finding it bizarre and fascinating that some kid in the 1930s held and used it the same way I used coins at the time — to buy those little Homies figures from gum-ball machines. I didn’t have a great sense of history yet.

Into my teenage years, I bought my first record player. This was obviously well after their heyday, but also far before the days of Urban Outfitters and Target getting exclusive, signed copies of top 40 albums. It was a nice sweet spot in time where you could get a very high-quality record player for about five bucks and then break it a week later when you tried to clean the needle with Pledge and a rag. Or so I’ve heard.

It’s the same for me politically, too. I’ve read enough about Watergate to the point that there are people in my life who think of me as the Watergate guy. There are very few people in history who have been bestowed that title and I think almost all of them went to jail. I’ll also often watch hours of election night coverage from the ‘90s and the 2000s. Yes, even the midterms. “I mean they wouldn’t put it on YouTube if other people didn’t want to watch it" is something I rehearse saying in the mirror for the times my wife catches me. Look, 179 views!!!

All of these things don’t mean I have given up on the modern conveniences of life. I use Apple Pay. I was a Spotify early adopter. I follow mostly non-Nixon-related news. I say all this because I’m currently sussing out a new nostalgic fixation that has me thinking about the pros and mostly cons of its modern replacement: DVDs.

About two months ago, I got a DVD player. After an odyssey through midtown Manhattan in which I hit up upwards of six different media stores and haggled with a smoke shop owner who wanted $100 (!!!) for the 20-year-old player collecting dust on his shelf, I did the adult thing and moped around until my wife bought me one on eBay. I needed it for work — I didn’t have aspirations of becoming a DVD guy — but suddenly I find myself the proud owner of no fewer than 15 lovely, slightly scratched discs, ranging from Garden State to Notting Hill to the 2007 blockbusting ABC7’s Central Park documentary. But why?

This new obsession is a little weird for me, because it’s the first one that I can remember as an actual point in time. I was about 9 years old when we made the jump from VHS to DVD. I remember watching Hoosiers on Christmas. You could see Gene Hackman so clearly! We weren’t a DVD family, per se, and I have never been a total film buff. We bought one every now and then — usually when a new Austin Powers came out — and we certainly weren’t like that one friend everyone had with a floor-to-ceiling shelf stocked with all the random Summer flicks you never saw.

So why am I suddenly scouring thrift stores for them? I don’t feel an intense nostalgia for the physical media like you would a VHS tape or a vinyl record or an old, favorite book. Something that gives a distinct warmth, a comforting sound or scent, a sense of tactility. I think the biggest force driving me toward DVDs is a juxtaposition to the hollowed-out streaming platforms we have today.

My new favorite store in NYC: BOOKOFF on 45th and 6th

My first Netflix streaming subscription cost an extra dollar a month on top of my $8 DVD plan, and it was a hub for all the network shows and movies I wanted to see but didn’t have the time to. Now, with seemingly every production company owning a streaming platform, I spend upwards of $55 a month on streaming and still somehow end up being forced to digitally rent every movie that wiggles its way in between my ears on a Saturday night. My brain knows this is a batshit thing to do, so now I’m wandering the $1 DVD sections of Goodwill, being haunted by the ghost of aughts movie nights, shaking its chains at me Scrooge-style and pleading, “there’s no monthly charge for a DVDeeeeee Codyyyyyyy.“

Netflix streaming was a revelation in the early 2010s. You could discover hits that you missed as they first aired, like Arrested Development or Breaking Bad. In 2024, though, 55% of Netflix’s catalog is produced by Netflix, with a goal of 75% in the near future, and it 100% sucks. Your mileage may vary, but the number of culturally significant pieces on the platform is quickly waning; its signature show has been milked for so long that its once pre-pubescent, middle school student-playing stars are now getting married for God’s sake.

The bloated and algorithmic-driven catalogs of these platforms are giving me empty calories. I’m spending the time half-watching a documentary on something that happened six months ago, but am I actually being entertained? Am I creating new memories? I’ve found now the process of procuring a movie I want to watch and making a physical commitment to putting SO much more fulfilling. It takes me back to a time when watching a movie at home was a special treat, not just something you do while you eat.

Getting a movie in the past might have been something you looked forward to for days, weeks, even months until you could get your hands on it. You browsed aisles at Blockbuster or a video store, waiting for the perfect title to jump out at you, instead of endlessly clicking through low-budget TV series that autoplay (loud as hell) if you so much as briefly pause to read the synopsis.

A DVD invites you to spend time with what you just watched. You pour over the special features or make your way through deleted scenes and bloopers. When you’re done, you turn the TV off and maybe even talked with your loved one about the movie, rather than panic-fumbling the remote as your TV automatically shuffles you to the next attention-sucker before the credits even begin to roll.

To put a bow on it, DVDs remain a moment in time, untouched by the issues of today. On digital media, scenes can now be edited or removed entirely (rightly or wrongly), iconic music tracks replaced, audio-dubbed with AI voiceover from now dead actors. But no one will ever come into my apartment, take my Scrubs Season 3 DVD and scratch Josh Radin’s “Winter” from it.

And for me, that’s goes beyond just nostalgia. Moreso than obsessions about old pennies, Temptations records, and Watergate. Having ownership over your movies leaves something indelible. It’s not just about something being old and a novelty, it’s about taking a little piece of myself back from the algorithms. And every chance I get to do that is special to me.

Now don’t tell anyone so the DVDs stay cheap 😭