Environmental Costs and Digital Hoarding “Digital” does not mean immaterial. The storage, transfer, and cloud-hosting of high-quality files consume electricity and contribute to carbon emissions. Large personal archives and duplicated backups multiply storage demands. The energy footprint of streaming high-bitrate video and maintaining redundant cloud servers is nontrivial. Digital insanity, in this sense, has a material environmental cost that is often overlooked in discussions that treat bits as weightless.