RIP: Email

Email is not dead, but as the old saying goes, it is starting to smell funny.

A generation has come along who lived their entire lives with the internet as a dominating presence, but it was once a huge novelty. To be able to cruise the electronic highway! Seeing new sites*, interacting on message boards, and writing personal emails. Writing to old friends, to new friends who in many cases we never even met, to writers, minor celebrities, everyone and anyone. It was new. Exciting. Different.

It doesn't seem that long ago when I would find numerous emails every time I would check after I had been gone an hour or so. I'd come home from work and there would be a pile of them, and I would have to devote a substantial amount of time answering them. The ones I had time to get to, that is.

Now I come home and find a buttload of Spam. Advertisements from websites and products that I sometimes use. Notifications of wonderful specials and new exciting announcements. And every now and then, a message from someone I know, or a personal note from someone who visits this website. That is rare.

People would share photos through emails. Seems pretty quaint now, doesn't it?

A big part of the decline in the use of email is, of course, the omnipresent social media networks. Facebook is still the most prominent, but Twitter is big. Remember My Space? Music acts still use it, but it seems like an obsolete place now. It used to be huge.

Why bother to create an email to share photos or meaningless chatter when Facebook is there, and so convenient to use? This way a bunch of people who barely know you are subjected to your own little reality show. We're all stars on the world wide web.

I remember some people bemoaned the use of email, favoring telephone calls or handwritten letters. Not me. I've never been much of a phone person, and I am not always in the mood to pick up the contraption and gab on it. You can read an email and pretend that you haven't read it yet. Unless the Sender used one of those annoying programs that confirms that you have opened the message. There are ways around that, though.

As for writing handwritten letters, you can have that. I hate it. I'm a longtime machinist and my hands always hurt. Writing by hand is a painful act to me.

Then there is texting. my God, who would have ever predicted that so many young people would rather type out a message than speak it aloud? Part of the allure of texting is that you do it on the sly. At work, in class, anytime. I do text now and then, but it is almost always a brief message. I don't get the whole endless texting thing.

Message Boards have become almost obsolete too, but I maintain one of them. Call me an old fashioned cyber sailor.

I do confess to owning one of those smart phones, though I am too dumb to make use of all its functions. I'm really not crazy about it at all, but I do like being able to check on stuff when I travel. And, yes, it is nice to be able to contact people by text, voice, or through the internet with one.

I kind of miss getting all of that email, even though it used to be overwhelming. I like it better than texting, and messaging on Facebook makes me feel like I am in a hive. Am I the only one who misses it? How many friends have you lost contact with that you used to write with on a regular, perhaps even daily, basis?

Maybe it's time to go retro and write a few emails. Get in tough with old cyberfriends. Perhaps an old fashioned email to dear old Mom. Or maybe write a corporation and pass along a complaint or some praise. Write a favorite writer and say that you love his/her books. If you can find an email contact on their websites. If they even have a homepage anymore.


*I wasn't sure whether spell this sites or sights. Both are appropriate.