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Physical media is pretty cool. 

Thanks to DVDs I can literally hold the concept of Juno in my hand. I can say "I HAVE Juno" - not just "I've heard of it" or "is that the Michael Cera one" or "I saw a clip from it on YouTube Shorts with subway surfers beneath".

It's useful signalling. 

We want friends who act like us, have the same values as us, and like the same things as us. So if I say "Wow, I *loved* Oppenheimer", a flurry of insufferable teen boys who slicked back their hair so they can be 'just like DeNiro!' will trip over their own feet to give their own interpretation of how the film "like, totally shows how like, capitalism is bad and stuff."

And if I'm seen listening to My Bloody Valentine, people can assume what kind of person I am and politely offer to make a blood pact.

Physical media just reinforces how committed you are to that perception of yourself. Not only do you stream that band for free on Spotify, but you also shelled out cash to buy a cool spinny disk that does the exact same thing? You must really love them.

One time I was cashiering (is that a word?) when a guy came up to the counter with a perfect condition Gorillaz CD I'd somehow missed while making the rounds. And I had to ring him up, between sobs of furious defeat to God, for a total of $1.

That section's mostly terrible Chopin CDs, so $1 is the standard price. But throw that Gorillaz CD into any hipster café in the world and the whole place would go to purge for it. I'd have paid up to $15 for it. $15 since it's good, but not quite worth full price at a CD store.

First hand CDs are ~$25, so it's not really a viable way to form a collection. I'm sitting on about 90 CDs - which, had I bought first hand, would be upwards of $2000. Plus the CD player itself - that makes it a pretty expensive method of pretentious self expression.

I get my CDs secondhand mostly. Which works since most of my favourite artists are... past their peak.

One day I found around 25 CDs for a buck each - about 7 Radiohead, 5 Red Hot Chili's, some Pixies and Pink Floyd - and even a Buckley. Not sure whose divorced dad died, but I went home pretty happy.

The last thing I'll say is that I've been asked if I listen to The Smiths and Radiohead, because I "look like I would". Hard to construe that as a compliment, but I get what she meant.

I wonder if I would still listen to the same bands, watch the same movies and play the same games if I looked different. Maybe my interests and opinions are all just a result of which subculture I visually align with the most closely, and what they've happened to like. Maybe I'd have nothing in common with myself internally if I looked different on the outside.

But hey, who cares. Even if I was a tanned, blonde tennis player, I think I'd still cry to Robert Smith.