What We Lose When Our Memories Exist Entirely in Our Phones

On New Year’s Day 2023, my friend Matt texted to say he’d bought a Peach Bowl ticket. On the surface, this message would seem to make little sense: The Peach Bowl, a semifinal in that year’s College Football Playoff, had been played the night before in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. We had spent about $500 each on last-minute tickets to be there in the far end zone as Ohio State’s kicker shanked a last-second field goal at the stroke of midnight, sending the University of Georgia’s Bulldogs to their second national championship game in as many years. Matt and I are both Georgia alums and lifelong fans; the tickets were worth it.

But what Matt had bought that morning was purely commemorative. As with almost every live event now, our actual tickets to the game only existed on our phones, and they’d disappeared along with the waning moments of 2022. The Peach Bowl had contracted with a vendor to print mementos for the game that could be personalized with your seat assignment — your own longitude and latitude for a moment immediately enshrined in the history of Georgia football. The event’s organizers had advertised the service — $12 for an oversize sheet of glossy cardstock or $40 to add an acrylic display case — in the order confirmation email for the digital tickets, and Matt had dug it back up.