If Christian Childress’s apartment caught on fire, the first thing he would save isn’t his phone, laptop, or even his wallet. It’s a VHS tape.
But not just any VHS—a bespoke edition of the 2009 horror-comedy, Jennifer’s Body, which was released years after VHS tapes stopped being produced. A few years ago, Childress’ friends edited the film into a 4:3 aspect ratio and mapped it onto a cassette so he could watch it on his old tube TV. His friends designed the box and burned the movie onto an old, pink Barbie VHS. Before the title credits, a message from his friends plays on the screen.
“It’s a true testament to me being seen,” Childress said.
At 23-years-old, Childress has collected DVDs and VHS tapes for most of his life. He’s part of a rapidly growing community opting for analog and physical media over digital options.
“Younger generations have grown up with the ubiquity of the internet,” said Forest Gamble, a lecturer in the New Media Department at UNC Asheville. “Some of them don’t remember a time when everyone wasn’t so connected.”
Gamble is teaching a course this fall called “Go Analog! Digital Minimalism, Offline Living, and the Attention Economy.”
“Now, the internet is so widespread, people are able to access it all the time,” Gamble said. “They get pulled out of the real world and into this digital space. I think a lot of students would prefer connecting with people in real life.”
But it’s not just a younger generation. In Greensboro and beyond, everyone from teenagers to people who remember rewinding tapes are reverting back to physical media. And stores are stocking them to meet the demand. Collectors and enthusiasts point to a longing for simpler times, the rising costs of streaming, and the rejection of constant digital connectivity.
“I think more people are trying to navigate our very weird and trying times by distracting themselves with nostalgia to remind them of a time when it was a little easier and gentler,” said Michael Ingram, owner of Nerdbombers, a hobby shop selling anything from comics to VHS tapes to collectible figures. “I would say that’s the shift.”
‘Nostalgia is A Huge Factor’
Childress grew up in Winston-Salem. He remembers going to video stores like Family Video, where his mom would borrow movies like Mean Girls and Clueless. They helped him develop his own taste.
When he was six years old, Blockbuster went out of business. So did Family Video. Then he started collecting DVDs, building an at-home collection.
Now, Childress’s room is filled with nearly 700 VHS tapes and DVDs. Movie posters for Burlesque, Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, and, of course, Jennifer’s Body cover his walls. Bratz dolls line his shelves, and a fuzzy purple blanket covers his bed. It looks like a room from the nineties.
It’s a comfort for him, he said. And he’s not alone.
“So many people in the world feel terror,” Childress said. “They’re millennials, they’re queer, they’re straight. It’s not a niche feeling … I think people have been pushed back to the simpler things, and it doesn’t get much simpler than a little 11-inch piece of plastic that you pop in and watch.”
That yearning for simpler times is part of the reason Rebekah Williams and John Kornegay started Rewind Collection, a VHS and DVD store that operates out of Nerdbombers.
“Nolstalgia is a huge factor,” said Williams. “We’ll find movies that were some of my favorites when I was a kid that I completely forgot about. That feeling is addicting. It’s so regulating for my nervous system to be a kid again and watch something I loved. And we’re starting to see other people have that same feeling. It’s magic.”
The two started selling VHS tapes and DVDs on eBay last year. They saw the gap left by McKay’s, which sold used books, records, and movies in Greensboro for decades before moving to Mebane in 2024. They wanted to share their collection, spanning close to 800 titles, with others. They started with an Instagram account and a few pop-up events around town. In April, they began renting the space out of Nerdbombers.
As a couple in their thirties, Williams and Kornegay remember watching VHS tapes as kids. Williams loves Dirty Dancing and Kornegay, Mulholland Drive.
“In general, older movies are like film photography,” Williams said. “When it’s shot on film, it has a different feel, it has texture like the grain, the fuzz. That’s something I like about VHS, too.”
That’s why Kornegay and Williams sell CRTs—the tube TVs that were dominant before flat screens—as part of their business, too.
“When you get the old tube TV, and you watch a tape on a TV that it was meant to be played on, it looks pretty great,” Kornegay said. “Sure, it’s not widescreen or in 4K, but sometimes watching a movie or experiencing art isn’t about the most perfect view of it. There’s fun in the imperfection.”
Murdoch Matherly and Michael O’Neil of Gemini Video couldn’t agree more. As a couple in their early forties, they were raised on all things analog.
“We have pretty much all forms of physical media,” Matherly said. “Records, vinyls, CDs, cassettes, VHS tapes. We even have laser disks.”
But VHS tapes stopped being mass-produced in 2006. Many of their favorite movies, released after that, were never offered on tape. That’s why they created Gemini Video.
For the last year, the pair has been burning new movies to old VHS cassettes they find at thrift stores or in the trash. They use an electromagnet to wipe the tape, edit the film to a 4:3 aspect ratio, and then burn it onto the blank cassette. Matherly, an artist, designs the covers, and they sell the pieces for about $25.
So far, they’ve made about 60 tapes, drawn from 30 different titles. Some of their more recent VHS translations include The Lighthouse (2019), Saltburn (2023), and The Substance (2024).
Owning a physical version of a beloved film is a big draw, they said.
“There’s a lot of rewatchability,” O’Neil said. “There’s something about being able to pop a CD or VHS into a player.”
Plenty of others agree—and are working to meet the demand.
“It can’t be taken away from you,” said Ben Roberts, owner of Strange Ways Comics & More. “You get to have this powerful relationship with the creation.”
As the owner of Strange Ways, Roberts’s whole business is in physical media. While vinyl records and comic books have been popular for decades, Roberts said he’s seen a surge in interest in VHS tapes more recently. He’s curated a selection of them at Strange Ways.
“We have people come from out of state to buy VHS tapes,” he said.
Around Christmas, parents come in looking for them as Christmas presents.
“It’s awesome to see that happen,” he said. “It’s not just people who were alive and nostalgic for it.”
Owning physical media means being able to share it with people in a way that can’t be done with digital media.
“We’re seeing people wanting to share something and passing things on to their kids,” Williams said. “You can’t pass on a streaming service.”
Conscious Curation
A big part of this draw to physical media is the rejection of the attention economy, said Gamble, the UNCA lecturer.
“You have companies like Facebook, Instagram, and AI companies that are trying to vie for people’s attention out in the world, namely to advertise and monetize their experience online,” he said. “This is one in a way that’s somewhat predatory. These companies have intentionally designed their platforms to extract as much attention as possible.”
Alienated by that environment, a growing number of people are looking to unplug from digital spaces. They’re reverting to physical experiences through analog media and hobbies like knitting, baking, or puzzles.
It’s a more mindful way to live, Kornegay said.
“People want to entertain themselves without being connected to the World Wide Web,” he said. “It feels more intentional.”
Roberts thinks it cultivates media literacy, too.
“It allows the consumer to have a bit more respect for what the creation is,” he said. “Whether that’s books or records or videos. Because you’re having to consciously interact with it.”
Collecting can represent people’s identities, Gamble said.
“People are cultivating their own collections,” he said. “A lot of them are things you can’t find on streaming because they’re so niche. I would go into a video store looking for a specific video. I would sometimes spend years looking for a movie rather than buying it online because of the hunt.”
Childress, the Greensboro VHS fan with more than 700 movies, said collecting “girly” videos helped him discover himself.
“My only access to femininity was Zoey 101, Hannah Montana,” Childress said. “Those were really big deals for me. I got to see girls that had attitudes and were cool and pop stars.
Then there’s the capitalism of it all.
In a time when wages are stagnating, and both inflation and rents are rising, paying for streaming services can feel like a lot, said Williams with Rewind Collection.
“Even when we could afford it, it was not a fun experience,” Kornegay said. “We would be paying for five or six different services, and the selection felt pretty stale. Nothing we wanted to watch was available.”
That’s why the two have recently expanded into rentals. They want people to be able to watch the movies they want for a reasonable price.
For Childress’s generation, owning physical media feels like a reclamation of power.
“A lot of our generation feels kind of hopeless,” Childress said. “There’s a sense of autonomy in owning your own media. It’s a lot bigger than just watching movies or having a shopping addiction or wanting a retro vintage vibe. There’s a safety and sense of control that my generation cannot hardly find anywhere else.”
There’s the environmental aspect, too. Seeing how quickly technology changes and how fast people are to buy the next new thing is concerning, Childress said.
“I think that Gen Z, we’ve seen such a complete overhaul of consumption,” he said. “I’m personally grossed out by it. I have 325 pieces of plastic, film, and metal that could be in the ocean right now, but instead will be loved by me.”
Rewind aspires to get into repairing old TVs as well.
“Now if you buy a TV and it breaks, you throw it away and buy a new one,” Williams said. “We’re kind of against that.”
Ingram with Nerdbombers agrees.
“There’s so much lost media that we will never know because it isn’t being conserved or archived properly,” he said. “But it’s part of who we are as a people and as a culture.”
The trend of physical media is creating a community of like-minded people. That’s Roberts’s favorite part of the job.
“Movies are awesome, but what’s more awesome is people,” he said. “The coolest thing that happens at our store is getting to talk to people getting to turn them on to stuff.”
In the end, it’s about connecting to things and people in the physical world, Childress said.
“VHS is life,” he said. “So are DVDs and physical media. Through media, you can find yourself and community, and no one can take that away from you, and I think that’s the beauty of it all.”
