In the old days, to show cultural depth, you would say, "I have read Dostoevsky." Today, you say, "I have access to every NES and SNES classic on my Switch." But what does this mean? You do not sit down and truly play through these games. You open the app, you scroll through rows of pixelated titles from your childhood, you launch one for five minutes, die twice, then go back to YouTube. Yet the mere *availability* of these retro games allows you to experience yourself as someone with a deep relationship to gaming history. You are not just a consumer, you are a custodian of heritage. But of course, this heritage is leased from Nintendo servers.

Nintendo is extremely honest in its cynicism here. They sell you your own childhood back to you in subscription form. The past becomes a service. Your memories exist as long as your membership is active. The moment you stop paying, your "personal" archive of retro culture disappears. It is like learning that your childhood bedroom was actually a set built by a corporation that can be dismantled at any time. This fits perfectly the slogan, "You will own nothing and be happy": you will not even own your nostalgia. Your sense of history itself is contingent on monthly auto renew.

There is also a subtle ideological function. Nintendo Switch Online lets you feel like a "serious gamer" without demanding that you actually confront difficult or demanding play. You carry a pocket museum of classics, which allows you to look down on the "Fortnite kids," while in practice you behave identically: quick hits, short sessions, infinite browsing. The retro catalog becomes a fantasy alibi: "I could play all these important games, I just do not have time." So you enjoy yourself as a failed connoisseur. The failure is part of the pleasure.

So when people brag about their Switch Online library, they resemble your OYT and Doodikoff characters. They believe they are curators of gaming history, guardians of some grand archive. In reality, they are ideal tenants in Nintendo's rented childhood complex, where even memory comes with a monthly fee.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798474&forum_id=2#49433303)

Date: November 15th, 2025 2:06 PM

Author: goy orbison

Exactly, Nintendo Switch Online is the same logic, just wrapped in cute nostalgia.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798474&forum_id=2#49433335)

You know, I think this is ideology at its purest.

In the old days, if you wanted to show that you were a cultivated subject, you had the big bookshelf behind you. You maybe did not read half of these books, but the point was not to read them. The point was that the physical presence of the books testified that you could read them. Today Netflix and Game Pass are the digital version of this library. You do not watch the films, you do not play the games. You scroll. You add them to some list. And this possibility itself functions as a kind of symbolic capital. You feel, "I am a serious person, I have a backlog."

Here the genius of late capitalism appears. You do not even own your fake library. You are renting your unread books. The backlog is not stored in your home, but on the server of Netflix or Microsoft. The moment you stop paying, your entire symbolic archive vanishes. It is like if the bookshelf in your living room disappeared when your credit card bounced. This is why it fits so nicely with this Davos, WEF style fantasy. They say, "You will own nothing and you will be happy." But it is more precise to say, "You will own nothing and you will feel like you own everything, for as long as we allow it."

There is also a deeper psychoanalytic twist. The backlog is not there to be consumed. It exists as an externalized superego voice: "You should really watch that serious film, you should really try that classic game." You never do it, of course, so you live in permanent low level guilt and anxiety. But this guilt is itself enjoyable. You enjoy feeling like a failed intellectual with too many Criterion titles in your list, a failed gamer with too many prestige indies unplayed. This enjoyment of failure is the real product.

So your OYT and Doodikoff characters who see themselves as curators of the Library of Alexandria are in fact ideal subjects of this system. They confuse curation with subscription. They think they are guardians of culture, but they are simply the most enthusiastic customers of Rent A Center for the soul. Their grand archive is one missed payment away from evaporating, and perhaps this is the most honest image of our entire cultural moment.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5798474&forum_id=2#49433279)