Things Forgotten And Things Remembered

Currently Listenting To :: Wild One :: Darius Rucker

For someone who is currently working in PR and spends a lot of time writing correspondence, I can't believe how incredibly awkward it is to write a personal email these days, let alone using the medium for informal flirting. I remember there used to be a time when an email was a well thought out piece of prose, especially when mailing someone for the first time. It was meant to be just like a good press release; concise, pithy, and one that garnered a positive response from the recipient.

Email was like a revelation...here was a way in which I could communicate with a new romantic interest with little fear of seizing up at their smile or letting my eyes wander in the wrong direction. Not to mention the innuendo and flirting, and the ability to turn the serious into the trivial with the use of a well-timed emoticon. :P

But with the plusses came unforseen negatives. Waiting for an email from someone else can be more agonizing than turning on the radio to the new hits countdown, only to get to number one and realise that they played your song over an hour ago, and that they probably played your song on every other radio station in the meantime. Then there's the doubt...did the email go through? Maybe they haven't checked their email lately? Did I sound too needy/flirty/scary? WHY HAVEN'T THEY EMAILED ME?!?!?!?

After email came the craze known as instant chat and messaging. Acronyms like IRC, ICQ, and MSN became just as recognisable as CD, BLT and ABC. A new language was formed where speed is king and where ROFL, while similar to LMAO, just wasn't the same thing. Everyone suddenly had a new way to define themselves, a new string of digits and letters that helped to make up their identity through multiple passwords, and a definite lack of sleep resulting from late night chat sessions.

Having been there and done that, it's not surprising that these days I still spend a lot of time on the internet. Does that make me a net geek? Or a forward thinking communicator who can multi-task with the best of them? Who knows, but one things for sure...when it comes to touch-typing and IM, IMHO I'm 1 l33t d00d.