After rolling around the web for some time - this type of 'addicted to buying media/software' discussion clearly belongs here the most. I find that on other forums, the users are less into buying/collecting/playing, and more into just spamming, discussing sales theories, quoting nobody blogs and teen-tard review sites.
I would say that over 80% of EB has a rabid retail (games, movies, music) addiction where as on other forums its more like 2-5% of the users come close to as much spend.
We really need a way to track the financial carnage that results from a week of EB'ers collective spend at the media-marts.
1.) Identify the users who believe that they have a shopping/buying problem.
2.) Identify the problems associated with impulse/addictive buying
3.) If the negatives outweigh the positives, figure out a way to get the user weened off of the damned buying addiction.
I will kick things off.
My name is John - and I am addicted to media/game shopping.
My biggest offense is in the form of games and music.
Exhibit A: Games
My XBOX collection;
http://gallery.mac.com/abrader#100008&bgcolor=blackMy Playstation collection;
http://gallery.mac.com/abrader#100015&bgcolor=blackThere have been hundreds of more titles - I just do not keep anything that wont play in a current machine (hence the legacy XBOX titles being so few in number and you dont see any SNES/Genesis carts there). There are like 10-20 other XBOX games id own if they worked on X360.
Exhibit B: Music
My music collection all imported into itunes comes out to be only 35 GB. I know people have massively larger libraries, but a.) everything I own is licensed or from a CD/record b.) I am a bit over my music hill so my modern music buying has all but been slowed down to a halt. I feel like this aspect of my addictive shopping tendencies has slowed down enough so that it doesn't need corrective attention. This really hurt me the most in college when I didn't have allot of $$ but still had to buy $100-$200 in music a week. Looking back on my library I have no regrets and still love everything. I hope I can feel the same way about the games 10 years from now.
Exhibit C: HD movies
I just got started on the movies this weekend. I have had a BD player for a while, but due to a few poor early releases (the original Blu Ray Full MEtal Jacket for example) I wasn't convinced it was worth buying into...Then I see and am wowed by the 2001 BD and suddenly im out at best buy loading up on 10-15 movies in one pop. The future releases look good too and I feel like getting good archive copies of childhood favorites. HD movies have officially wowed the pants off of me and now I just want to watch some things so I can glare in awe at the lovely looks.
So buying os good right? What can the problem be?
The problem starts when this media shopping uses up such a small amount of your income - it feels easy to go buy gaggles of disks because there is plenty of money to go around....
But what about when you start buying owning WAY more stuff than you can vide? You can clearly see about 10-20 unopened games in my backlog - and no doubt I bought many of those games for full price the date they were released.
Why not just wait till $60 games drop to $40-$20 range? Because I do not like crusty used stuff and I buy some very unpopular titles and fear missing the release (see ATLUS RPG's)
We ask the questions;
Does your buying addiction adversely effect your financial health? Does your urge to shop take priority over paying bills, etc..?Is it worth owning everything you buy? You usually want something in your personal collection for the memories - are the memories worth the spend? Are you a nostalgic type?Do you feel that your addiction to shopping is a problem? What do your loved ones and family members think?If anything - what have you LOST to your buying addiction? Your car, wife, house?One thing I started doing at home is photographing and journaling why I buy the things I buy. If I can read my own justification on my own purchases, and not feel distinguished mentally-challenged about the reasons I let it slide. If I look back at my shopping journal, and feel bad I force myself to take a week long timeout from shopping. I am not sure if this is helping the overall problem, but at least i document and review my thoughts later as most of the buying is done on the impulse where really no-logic is present.
An example of such an entry can be found in my journal when I bought Terminator 1 and 2 on BD disk Saturday....I explain that I have seen the movies 10-15 times each as a kid, love the music and they always invoke a nostalgic feeling inside of me. This makes the $60 purchase of both films feel warranted.
On that same day I bought the LEGO StarWars collection for PS3.....I dont really like starwars (except for the battlefront games) and was really just looking for some "toy story" GFX
Was this purchase worth it? Not as much. These games hold no memories for me and I might as well have bought the title when it hits $20 as opposed to $50.
On that note I have placed myself on a buying restriction until next week when UT3 comes out for PS3.
