Please stop sending me the WTC Nostradamus predection, it's an hoax just in case you didn't know. Seen the "America's a great neighbour" one from the Canadian radio announcer. I'm also disinterested in the "account" of a friend of a friend of a guy you met in the street's grandmother's roommate's ex-boyfriend's mate. It's not very well written and it's starting to lose formatting on its eighteenth lap of the web.
I guess this is business as usual for the web, but there's nothing that makes you lose web-cred faster than a shitty forwarded email. I'm not a very important person as far as the personal website "scene" goes. Not that many people read my page, yet still I get crappy forwarded emails from people I don't know.
I spend a shitload of time on the web. Most of the time I'm not asleep I'm online in some form. I work with a group of people who have similar net-habits - some who are worse than I.
Where's this going?
Please think before you hit the forward button. I know that you've heard this before a million times. You've probably even forwarded an email entreating people to do exactly this. I'm saying it again in the hope that with enough repetition people will actually start listening. If you're trying to impress somebody whose webpage or blog you've seen the worst thing you can do is to forward them an email. If it's got more than three >'s at the beginning of any line then they've already fucking seen it. Twice.
If you wish to make contact with someone on the web. If you like their site, think they're cute, hate their taste in music, whatever, then you have two choices:
One - The James Technique:
(Press [Ctrl+N] in your favourite email client and copy in the following)
"I like/hate/want to sexx0r [delete where applicable] your site/music taste/anchovy potato bran muffin [delete where applicable].
I also think that what you wrote about aphids/the colour blue/Britney Spears/sexx0ring people/your scab collection [delete where applicable] really rings true for me/suxx0rs [delete where applicable].
If you do this, then the person you are writing to will read your message, think "Hey, a person with an opinion," and write back to you. They might even take note of what you said, and one day they might even change their site/listen to different music/sexx0r you [delete where applicable].
Two - The Not-So-Clever Technique:
(Find some random shit email that one of your 7 year old little sister's friends forwarded to you. Press [Ctrl+F] in your favourite email client and fill in the object of your affections' email address)
Then press send.
If they're tolerant they'll probably just ignore your email and delete it.
If they've snapped (like I'm about to) then don't be surprised if they send an email back saying "Fuck Off," subscribe your email address to 86 different spam lists, bomb your ICQ, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, NBC, TLC, BUM and anything else they can find, send you a trojan (which they know you'll be dumb enough to install), use your computer to post your plans to bomb the White House on the FBI mailing list, then come over to your house and fuck your sister
I know which one I'd be most inclined to do, but I'm a very clever boy. Are you clever too? I hope so. I sincerely hope so.
That said, I still think email is great and would love to hear from you. Tell me what you've been doing today. Tell me what you think I should do with my dried slugs. Ask me what I think about your site. Ask me what I've been doing today... I'll probably send you this URL if you ask me about my day, but at least you're keeping your sister safe.
