[szvsw]

Not sure why petrochemicals and trees ie hydrocarbons are any more or less absurd than the silicon, metals, etc quarried and mined from around the world needed to store information digitally in data centers (or mobile devices).

Storing data of any kind in plastic as opposed to silicon metal seems like a meaningless distinction that only comes about from imagining that there is some disembodied, ethereal and platonic notion of digital “data” which is decoupled from any physical substrate. everything is always materialized and mediated through some complex, and probably vaguely arcane, geologically extractive process in some way.

[tempaccount5050]

Because a billion people can share the file at once. It's tough math to do, but I can't believe transporting physical media all over the world is really better.

[Nasrudith]

It reminds me of the inane motivated reason backwards reasoning from people desperate to cast Amazon as a villain and nonsense they claimed. About how online shipping was a carbon villain. Acting as if goods are simply teleported onto store shelves and they aren't delivered using trucks and then picked up by consumers with their own vehicles. While pretending that every delivery consists of only one package per truck on a route.

About the only worse case of motivated reasoning I have seen are from NIMBYs straining their brains to claim how any new development would be catastrophic. One notable example being a claim that adding trains would bring in more criminals to the neighborhood and lead to more burglaries.