Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road

In 1994, when I was in college, I discovered the Internet. Back then there weren’t many web pages or web browsers accessible to the average technophobe, but everyone had email. It was a novelty and a convenience, being able to communicate with friends so rapidly, and some of my best memories at Cornell revolve around sitting in the computer lab and coming up with funny subject titles for emails to my friends. (You should know that I had a miserable time at Cornell, so sitting in the computer lab was pretty darn kickin’ in comparison.)

Back then, email was merely a faster way to send letters. An email was constructed as carefully or carelessly as a letter might be, but in general, my friends and I were still in the habit of sending emails that were at least a few paragraphs long, because who would bother sending 2 lines as a letter and wasting a stamp on it?

Now, though, email has become too convenient. People can, and do, send emails to friends or strangers and even coworkers without proofreading or making sure the email says what they want it to say. I admit it; I send emails littered with typographic mistakes and incomplete thoughts. Because after all, if I’ve left something out, I can always send another email.

As a writer of emails like these, I have to wonder if it really matters that I haven’t spell-checked or bothered to put more time into what I’ve sent to someone. But as a reader of emails like these, I wish more people would stop using email.

In the past two weeks, I’ve received three emails from three different people, all asking for dog advice. One email asked for “HELP, NOW.” Apparently the situation was so urgent that she didn’t even have time to tell me the actual problem. I replied back within two minutes of receiving her email because I’d been logged on at the time. She took a day or two to respond and then basically said to forget about it, although not before I’d wasted too much of my own time worrying about what her problem could be, and if she and her dog were okay.

Of the three emailers, only one person had actually done some research into her problem before emailing me. And of all of them, none wrote back to thank me after I’d responded with the limited information I had. Evidently there are no manners in cyberspace.

And subject titles? Now I content myself with “hi” or “hello,” and even then, I’m worried that those could be construed as spam.

In the pre-Internet days, if a friend didn’t reply within a month of receiving a letter from you, you knew that meant she didn’t want to be friends anymore, or that she’d had some sort of accident. Nowadays it’s common for me to take months to reply to someone I genuinely want to stay in touch with, or for others to not reply at all because their inbox is flooded and my email’s steadily fallen lower in the queue.

Maybe it’s time to declare a holiday from emailing. This season, instead of spending your vacation online, dig out that Hello Kitty stationery and write to a friend. And maybe we can start realizing that if our thoughts aren’t worth the price of a stamp, they’re probably not worth hitting “send,” either.

*Note: As Lone-Fan-Unrelated-To-Me Eric pointed out, there are good emails as well with the bad. There are people who take the time to thank me or to comment thoughtfully on something I’ve written. But it’s easier for people to email when something’s wrong than to notice when something’s right.

2. This real person sometimes has more important things to do that respond to every email I receive. And if I’ve taken the time to help you out (with something you could have figured out with a little more time, no less), a thank you would be nice.

Posted by: ssjane | December 2, 2004 | 7:38 pm
Posted in: Rants