LainTrain

We are all but dust, my friend.

That's very fatalistic. In the end, unfortunately, for now, maybe, but that doesn't mean the journey doesn't have memories worth making and things worth keeping, especially when it comes to our bonds with others, and especially when it's just undeniably useful, or we'd never have invented writing.

And I guess you've got nothing to offer there

I mean I gave the reasons many times over? From personal to purely practical. If they don't seem to have value to you, that's on you. I don't know what else you want?

Implying that the only value I recognize is monetary? Don't be a dick.

You're the one who said you'd keep them for a podcast? I'm sorry, I don't mean to be a dick, i was just going off what you said.

Are you just sitting around reading conversations from months ago for entertainment or something?

No not really, not outside of if I'm reminiscing with the person the convo was with (see examples in my other comments ITT), but I will ctrl+f and find info that way of something they said to me for sure.

What value are you getting out of keeping chats from years ago?

Access to information? Not deleting things I might need or that might be useful later? Memories? Records of things that happened?

Kind of the same reason you'd keep a diary, but without the effort of actually writing anything in one. What's even the point of writing anything if it's just gonna be gone in like a week?

What value are you getting out of deleting them? Are you low on storage or something? Or some sort of minimal living life-in-my-backpack type?

Not in the slightest. For what purpose would I want that? I'm not making a This American Life podcast using my inane conversations.

Monetary value isn't the only kind of value to me I guess. Different strokes.

What exactly would I want to look up beyond say a week's time?

Uhm, anything and everything? Like what "casual bullshit" you were up to or what you were "organising"?

In-person and phone conversations fade away all the same.

So you don't even wish you could preserve those?

That's crazy to me how different some people's idea of social relations is. Well you do you! Thanks for explaining!

Why?

Surely when the chats are on-device they are not encrypted, or encrypted separately with an unrelated secret in storage which can be passed to another device?

SMS is inconvenient and expensive and I can't really send SMS messages from desktop. I use IM because it's more convenient, not because it's more secure, though it's a neat bonus.

And why would you not be looking that up months or years down the line? Why would you want to trash it?

Why? That stuff is literally your life, it's absurd to toss it in the void.

They would have to have access to your account though? By that same logic whatever you do keep records in could be compromised all the same. Actually far more likely to just be lost due to hardware failure.

What could actually be easier than CTRL+F the primary source?

Why?

Recently me and my gf were reminiscing about how we met and what we talked about first, since we have many common interests and we got along really well on our first date, it was interesting to go and actually look up what it was we talked about then because we couldn't agree on what it was.

Was a shame we didn't have our very very first messages from OkCupid but at least we had our WhatsApp and Telegram history.

On another occasion, a friend of mine was feeling nostalgic for a time we were playing through RE6 together, and I was able to go back in our chat history and find the memes we made about it at the time, full of in-jokes and whatnot and screencaps, which really cheered him up and was just fun to reminisce.

Another time I had an argument with some friends over which year we went to see A Wonderful Life in the cinema, and whether it was 2023 or 2024 and that was nice to have messages from that time to refer to and we ended up remembering a small adventure we had the same day and laugh about it.

Or what about a nice heart to heart you had? What about something kind a friend said that cheered you up you want to see again? What about some good advice someone gave you once that could come in handy now?

What about that one funny video you can only remember one bit from but you remember who you sent it to? or a song or whatever?

What about raising an issue with your partner over something bad they do and being able to directly quote examples?

Heck I used my messages from the time I moved to a new flat figure out what day I actually moved in, since the tenancy agreement was on some old portal I had no access to anymore and I needed to know the day I moved for address history on a visa application.

I guess if you're older, you probably don't have a lot of friends who have a phone/computer or text? To be honest I'm kind of baffled, what do you even reminisce on, if not experiences shared with others? Or do you just not like having a record of memories?

No, I don't do video calls personally other than at work.

But the vast majority of communication when not IRL to me is text so that makes sense to preserve, even info, daily communication and memes, just the kind of day to day stuff you wouldn't "make memories" of but might want to look back on someday anyway.

I pretty regularly end up looking back on that stuff one way or another too, either just literally reminiscing or to check something or whatever.

It's come in extremely useful, fun and has no real downsides. I can't even imagine not doing it. Like going somewhere and not even taking a picture. What if you forget it ever happened?

How do you even build a narrative of your life? What do you do about things you forget or forget the details of like when it happened etc.?

Many times I thought something happened in e.g. January only to be proven wrong by looking up messages from that time and be proven wrong, naturally as human memory is pretty shite for the most part.

You have no S.O. or friends you'd want to look back on chats with from 2-5 years ago to reminisce about how you met or something you did?

What do you even use messengers for then?

(I am genuinely curious this is not meant to sound so patronising)