Monday, December 13, 2010

e-mail-related musings

1. Lately I've noticed a shift in my e-mail behavior: if I click on a new e-mail and it's some five paragraph-long thing or it begins with the sentence "Sorrrrrry I've been so MIA" or it's an e-mail from my landlord, I'll just "star" it immediately without actually reading the e-mail. Sometimes it will be DAYS later when I'm scrolling through my "Starreds" that I'll take the time to read the e-mail, in which I'll learn my college roommate is now dating that girl who was in our art history section or that there will be no water in my apartment the next morning. (After re-reading this paragraph, I am now more sure than ever that they wrote "Like a G6" about my lifestyle.)

2. Have started dropping question marks and abbreviating idiotically ("ur" "2" etc.) with increasing frequency and to a wider swath of people, which I feel like is the opposite of what's supposed to happen as you get older.

3. One of the most disconcerting e-mail-related phenomenons is when you send Sasha an e-mail and, while you're still waiting for her to respond, a mutual friend (James) mentions the e-mail to you over gchat or something. James will type "so I hear you're not going to make it to the birthday dinner..." and you'll write "ohhh, yeah, i meant to tell you" and then "where did u hear that?" and James will respond "sasha mentioned it at brunch yesterday." And then you start feeling all weird and panicky, wondering if Sasha is mad at you and worrying about why she isn't responding to your e-mail but yet talking to all these other people about it. You notice Sasha is signed on to gchat and contemplate gchatting her, or even texting her, just to make sure she's not mad... but then decide to just do nothing about it.

4. I've noticed that when I'm nervous about how a friend is going to respond to a particularly important/emotional/formal e-mail, I'll follow it up almost immediately with a really silly/short/meaningless e-mail (like a link to a "funny article" or a pasted Facebook status of someone we both can't stand). I'll write "LOL" in the body, as if the average of this e-mail and the previous one comes out to something totally normal and nondramatic.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

#2 happens to me ALL. THE. TIME.