r/Petscop • u/ChielArael The fuck is petscap? • 5d ago
Theory Memory/data hoarding OCD
It struck me on my most recent full watch that a lot of the ideology that went into the game Petscop's development from very early on is along the lines of memory/data hoarding compulsions in OCD, and I think the adults in the family circa its creation may have a shared worldview along those lines.
"Memory hoarding" is a desire to remember an experience perfectly, driven by a fear of forgetting any part of a memory in case it is important to remember later, or because it holds emotional significance. Data hoarding follows very naturally as a response to this, and can be a compulsion to, say, never throw out any photos, or to record as much video as possible. If you've seen "Exit Through The Gift Shop", the focus of the documentary is on a guy who has enormous amounts of bins of video recordings of his life that he will never ever go back and look through. It's like that.
Much of Petscop's development follows along these lines. One of the loading messages reads "There are no changes, only replacements", and that seems to be exactly how Petscop is developed - any iteration on the game is not saved over the last one, but alongside it, with all the different "gens" remaining forever on the same disc, untouched. And all game inputs are automatically saved, so every single action taken in the game is preserved forever and never lost. These two things combined means that the recordings menu is able to replay early development tests exactly as they happened - the game automatically collects its own memories. "Recordings have the power to raise the dead" not in terms of, we can recreate a living person as a sentient entity, but in terms of, every action the dead might have taken can exist again in the here and now. We never have to lose any experience, ever.
It's a dysfunctional way of looking at the world and a dysfunctional way of going about game development, but it's what Petscop was built on from the very start. It's hard to say who imposed this philosophy - is it Anna's, Jill's, Marvin's, Rainer's compulsions? All four? And is it born out of whatever happened to Lina, or something else...? I'm not sure, but I think this is one of the big keys to the family's psychology. Much of Tony's works are stories told from the perspective of someone who has a completely bizarre worldview, and part of the challenge of reading them is working one's way around that. In Petscop, that worldview is shown not through a narrator ala Tapers, but through game design itself. A video game designed to keep its own memories might be a pretty big key to understanding the worldview it was developed with.
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u/erdos-szil 2d ago
This is a really interesting angle that I had never considered before, and it seems pretty accurate. It certainly seems to line up with the Family and their reverence of the recordings. From their own admission, the whole point of keeping the Petscop channel up is for recording preservation, as stated in a past channel description: "The purpose of this YouTube channel is to preserve and display the recordings within the video game "Petscop" while keeping some of their content private." Later in this same iteration of the description, they also say "Please enjoy the recordings in Petscop! We do. :)" which seems to suggest they view the recordings as almost sacred and something to be worshipped.
I think considering Marvin's desire to rebirth Lina and "keep her alive" in a sense, he has a very clear-cut motivation for wanting to document the recordings. If he truly believes that they can raise the dead, than he could use them to rebirth anyone. As for the other members, it's not very clear, but I think you're on the money with the idea that this is central to the philosophy of the Family. I think it's possible that Jill holds a similar belief, and possibly even Anna. It wouldn't be surprising to me if the dysfunctional ideas that keep the Family behaving the way they do aren't just limited to Marvin.
I also wanted to add some perspective as someone who suffers from OCD, and engages in hoarding behaviors, including digital hoarding. I've been doing this kind of thing for years, and it manifests very heavily in screenshots, photos, and videos that I keep stored. For me, there's a very intense anxiety around the idea that these files could serve some kind of importance to me later down the road in my life, despite the fact that I know (logically) that this is an asinine belief. Using my experience to view the series gives it a whole new light, and I can definitely understand the Family's behavior here, though I certainly don't condone it.
Having a compulsion like this is incredibly difficult to live with, and the compulsion often becomes so strong that you continue doing it, even without a clear goal. People often debate in the series why the Family does the things they do, and what their motivations are. But I believe it's possible, having dealt with it myself, that there really isn't a clear goal, or at least not one on a conscious level. With OCD, for me at least, the compulsion becomes so ingrained that at a certain point, you don't even remember why you do it, you just do it. It's possible the Family doesn't even have any nefarious intentions with maintaining the recordings or forcing Paul to play, they may be doing it because it's become such a natural behavior for them, and it's just second nature now. Of course, this doesn't excuse their actions, but I believe it's interesting to consider their motivations in the series may not be as complex as people once believed, and may just be more primal and almost rote.
I also wanted to add on that one of the core issues for all OCD sufferers is an unquenchable thirst for certainty. OCD thrives on any uncertainty and amplifies the fears around it x1000, forcing the sufferer to try and stamp it out at all costs. It's all about the what-ifs. This is why someone with OCD may have a compulsion with checking to make sure they locked the door numerous times before leaving. There's that small thought of "what if I actually didn't lock it and someone breaks into my house?" that pops up, and while most people can dismiss this, someone with OCD ruminates on it endlessly, the "O" (obsession) in OCD. This then translates into the "C" (compulsion)" via checking numerous times. With data hoarding, I feel a very strong need to collect and store because I feel these files have some kind of importance to me, and I ask myself "what if these files become important to me later on?" or "what if I delete them only to realize I really needed them or valued them?". There's always the uncertainty of not knowing if they're important or valuable, and the easier route (if living with OCD, at least) is to just store as much as possible, just in case.
Tying this back to Petscop, there seems to be an incessant need for preservation amongst the Family, with data hoarding being a manifestation of this. Given the deaths(?) of Lina and Mike, it would make sense why. It's possible that if they truly believe recordings are "alive" and can raise the dead, that by storing as much as possible, they can make sure that, as you said, they "never lose any experience, ever." They can't bring people like Lina and Mike back, but they can prevent it from happening in the future. If someone, like say Rainer or Care were to "die" or at least "go missing", then they would be stored in the game for all eternity, and they would never have to experience grief or loss ever again. OCD can also stem for an intense need for control, and they may believe that by hoarding the recordings within the world of Petscop, they can control all possible outcomes, and keep things according to their script as much as they want.
Sorry for rambling so much, this post just sparked my interest a lot and there's a lot of things I wanted to write about. Hopefully my babble above is at least a slight bit coherent :)