The Last Good Thing
December 22, 2025 at 04:30PMIn this essay for The American Scholar, Jess Love recounts receiving a neighbor’s collection of 92 DVDs, containing “practically every major kid’s cartoon movie from the last 20 years.” She then tells her family that they’re “going analog,” hoping to free themselves from a life of streaming. Love’s piece explores nostalgia, choice, and why parents often want to connect their children to their own past.
“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck,” said the philosopher Paul Virilio. Here’s the thing: I grew up when it still felt possible that we could invent the ship and then put our heads together to avoid the shipwreck. In the world bequeathed to my children, it can seem like there is no avoiding the wreck. And in this world, in this widening gyre of uncertain outcomes and frictionless gratification, DVDs are shiny and real and the same shape as life preservers. DVDs are the last unambiguously good thing: the last technology that arrived and only made things better and would never ever let us down.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/12/22/dvds-streaming-nostalgia/
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