Digital Hoarding as Virtual-Accumulation Wrong Attractor: The Infinite-Storage Trap, Deletion Anxiety Basin, and the Return to Curated Attention

Digital hoarding — the compulsive accumulation of digital files, emails, browser tabs, subscriptions, and media without processing or curation, driven by deletion anxiety and scarcity thinking — is here formally reconceptualized as a wrong attractor W_DH in the landscape of curated attention. The healthy ground state S^0 is defined as curated attention: the deliberate management of digital accumulation such that stored information serves retrieval, use, and meaning rather than accumulating as unprocessed digital mass.

W_DH is structurally distinct from physical hoarding in that the infinite storage affordance of digital media removes the natural friction that normally limits physical accumulation, creating an environment uniquely suited to hoarding dynamics. Six basin-deepening variants are characterized: email accumulation, browser tab hoarding, photo entropy, subscription accumulation, file system entropy, and bookmark proliferation.

Nine formal propositions characterize the infinite storage trap, deletion anxiety as loss aversion, cognitive load depletion from digital clutter, the distinction from appropriate archiving and research accumulation, and return paths through digital minimalism, inbox zero practices, and periodic curation rituals.