You Cannot Cry into your iPhone
By Miranda Morgan
There is something about it – analog mediums. The long-lost ritual of having your heart broken and flipping through your CD holder for the perfect heartbreak anthem, before placing it into your CD player along with your feelings, and becoming overwhelmed with satisfaction at the sound of the first lyric. An experience you curated for this exact desperate moment to stimulate the release of some cathartic tears.
Or, maybe you turn to Spotify for just the right tune after being dumped in an untimely fashion – ugh! Unfortunately, you have awful wi-fi, so the sound of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” comes out more like “si-si-since you…” and then, radio silence. The quest for your anthem has really turned into two battles instead of one. Instead of healing that broken heart, you would much rather toss your phone across the room.
But you cannot. If you did, you would lose your photos with friends, e-books, all your passwords (especially since you opt for the suggested password route, which tends to create secret codes not even DaVinci could crack), and all your top anthems, even the ones that just do not seem to load in the moments you need them most.
Crap. To make it even worse, now you have lost your two-factor authentication device, so say sayonara to your email logins. Wait – how are you supposed to log in to those streaming services you used to buy the newest movies? $25 per movie – and you bought plenty of them, as a self-described cinephile – just down the drain? Are phones not supposed to make your life easier? Why is losing them such a compounding nightmare?
The Y2K digital revolution was Earth-shaking. The ease of having everything you could ever need in the palm of your hand was anything anyone had ever wanted. You simply would not be cool if you did not cave to the wave by carrying some rendition of a BlackBerry, iPod or other personal computer, in addition to your growing collection of VHS, DVD, CD and vinyls.
However, as we progressed into the 2010s, all you needed to be with the curve was your iPhone, or Samsung, if you swing that way – the physical media collections were largely left in the past, just like Blockbuster.
As we now enter the back half of the 2020s, there has been a resurgent interest in the analog mediums we considered a thing of the ‘vintage’ past.
Film cameras graze the hands of many. Vinyl display walls are a popular aesthetic design choice. Instagram pages center around the warm comfort of popping in a VHS and making a home-cooked meal, as opposed to doordashing overpriced tacos while you decide between the newest Netflix releases.
So, why now, nearly two decades after the digital revolution that was slated to change the world forever, are people regressing into the tangibility of physical media?
“Tangible items make me feel grounded. They are existential. They have shape, weight, and scent. They are both resilient and fragile,” says Harry Male from Medium. “Their existence reminds me of our own. Some of them may be useless now, but they helped me regain my footing. If they can serve a new purpose, so should I.”
The impermanence of the digital age has slowly started to come to the attention of the public 26 years after Y2K. There is a longing for the physical feel of a CD, a film strip, a cassette.
Physical items remind us of our own physical existence. When we can flip open a photo album with our elderly loved ones and reminisce on the past, it provides a sense of community and love that sending a photo or text cannot provide.
To own the limited edition copy of your favorite movie feels like an accomplishment. Something you can proudly display on your shelf as a talking point when your closest friends come over.
When we give up on having things – owning things – we abandon parts of our identities that used to be deeply ingrained into our culture.
In the video game sphere, this lack of ownership is becoming especially prevalent.
“According to Nintendo’s new End User License Agreement (EULA), what you’re really getting is a limited, revocable license,” said Patrick McCormack in a 2025 article. “Meaning: if Nintendo thinks you’ve violated their rules, they reserve the right to remotely brick your console even if you paid full price for it.”
While these policies have drawn more negative attention than the practice of buying movies on Amazon or saving all your photos to iCloud, what is the true difference between them?
The World Economic Forum published an article in 2016 entitled, “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.”
As we stand 10 years post-publishing, and 4 years until 2030, this quote, while not inherently satirical, has become a satirically dystopian phrase fitting of our times.
At the end of the day, you will own nothing, and you will be happy.