Imagine that you are REALLY angry about something.
You choose to send an email of complaint to the relevant company or authority, expressing your frustrations (eloquently, of course!).
You hit send with a great flourish and sit back, bristling with indignation, to wait for the response.
When this response comes, it is quite cool and snide… not what you might expect, under the circumstances.
Do you:
a) write back in outrage?
or
b) check which email account you used to send your initial complaint?
It is quite an amazing thing how many people will write emails in which they wish to be taken seriously, but give little or no thought to the construction of the email address they are using. I mean… could YOU take any of the following email address components seriously?
lovingforaliving@… (screams: “I’m on the game”)
jelly_kitty@… (what?!)
ali_is_a_superhero@… (really?)
purpleypink_fluffyhippy@… (ok…)
Maybe people assume that no-one looks at their email address anymore, in this age of digital address books and “reply” buttons. These email addresses are great for corresponding with friends, who probably *get* the joke, but in any professional setting they can give out totally the wrong idea.
Whilst exclaiming over a particularly cring-worthy address today (wobblybits@…) I commented that someone should do a piece of research studying the ways in which people choose and apply their email addresses in the variety of cultural settings that now exist on t’internet. As the average number of email addresses per user increases, will a social code develop that prohibits these addresses being paraded in the more serious areas of the world? Are people developing personal rules for their personal email accounts or even considering their email address as part of their online image? Or are the culprits here those who only have the one freemail address and have to scramble around for the bit of paper it is scribbled on any time it needs to be recounted?
I may seem a little flippant here – but what underlies is, I believe, an important social point. There is obviously a lot of language play going on in the construction of such addresses, which in itself would be interesting to study. Also, in all the hype surrounding other net applications, the simple email runs the risk of taken for granted and seems to be little considered in terms of its social representation of a person online.
Does anyone really study these things? If not, they jolly well should! I can see a happy evening of curiosity-browsing ahead of me, in pursuit of such a dedicated social researcher so I can send them cake…
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