I'm At theferrett@theferrett.com. Still.
Dude. I’m right here. You know where I am?
theferrett@theferrett.com.
That’s the email address I’ve used for a decade, and it’s easily available in a zillion places. I know, because spammers seem to find it wherever their malicious little robots roam. If you need to contact me, please do so there.
The reason I say this is because people keep messaging me on LJ and Facebook in their attempts to contact me, and it doesn’t work. I don’t even like Facebook, so I check it periodically in the same way you check that bit of moldy leftovers at the back of the fridge. Messages there can languish for months at a time. Likewise, LJ messages may likewise sit in stasis for weeks.
Then I feel bad, because someone emails me to go, “I HAVE A BONE STUCK IN MY THROAT AND MY OXYGEN SEEMS TO BE DWINDLING, DO YOU HAVE ADVICE?” and then I don’t see it until July.
I know Facebook and LJ and all of the other social networking sites want to replace your email because then they’ll be your viewpoint to the world and you’ll be shackled to their snazzy email system… But I don’t work that way. The other social networks are an inconvenience for me, and as such their friendly attempts to replace mostly-working systems with their ad-choked and annoying bits.
I don’t want to have to go to Facebook in the first place. So please. Don’t make me.
Now, I can understand using a social network when you don’t know where to contact someone otherwise, but I’m telling you my details so you don’t have to. Hell, leave a comment on my blog. And Lord knows I can be sporadic with email, too, but at least then I’ll see it and feel guilty. Contacting me via Facebook message is like condemning it to Purgatory – a nebulous, wandering place where they languish until an unspecified freedom date.
I beg thee. Mail may not be your friend, but it is mine. Send it on, man.
As someone who has had the same, albeit generic, email address for … heck, ten/twelve/fifteen years… or better yet, the same phone number for oh-god-I’m-old longer… if you want my attention, call me. Text me. Send me an email if it’s good to wait a day or so.
But facebook me? or anything else? … not if you expect me to see it, so pretty much never.
(And yes, I am probably on facebook 4 days out of 7… but, dude, their system is so bad to begin with, and I’m on from my not-smart phone. So… never is it a good idea. -Never-.)
Look, I have had the same email address for a decade, but between you and Jer, I just don’t understand what is so hard with having your private messages from your social media forward to your email address. I mean, are you getting Facebook Spam? I’m not, at least not literally. Asking other people to remember your social media preferences seems (and I mean no offense) presumptuous, doesn’t it?
Don’t get me wrong, I will remember yours just as I remember Jer’s, but people aren’t willfully trying to communicate with you in the wrong place – making it easier for them to reach you the way you want is probably a better idea, in my opinion.
Direct Messages to my twitter, facebook, LJ (not that I use it now) or wherever go to my email address, so unless someone included me on a public message, I don’t miss out, and no one has to know what my social media preferences are.
(((I just don’t understand what is so hard with having your private messages from your social media forward to your email address. )))
Well, in my case:
1) Facebook tends to be very erratic about the messaging when I had it enabled, SOMETIMES forwarding to me, sometimes not, with about an 80% hit rate, and then I had it keep changing preferences on me whenever there was an upgrade wherein it flooded me with every data. Now it sends me nothing at all.
2) LJ’s message filter, at least for me, sends me part of a message, which I then have to remember to click through at some later point (assuming I’m busy now) to go read the entirety of a poorly-formatted message.
So. It may be easy for YOU, but assuming that ease of use for everyone is, shall we say it, presumptuous as well. And considering most of these emails are requesting feedback from me on some issue, perhaps it is presumptuous of me, but on the other hand given that it’s a request of my time, it’s nice to ensure that it’s as convenient as possible.
Fair enough, particularly regarding your final point. I’ve not had problems with facebook not sending to me, though of course LJ has been horrible over the ages.
I guess that an email is, essentially, a request for someone’s time as you say, I just haven’t considered it as such a, I don’t know, transactive process. It is, mind you, but I enjoy most messages I get from people I know, and because of that, I want to make it as easy for them to do it as possible.
If only there was some way to make it more challenging for people to send messages I find less rewarding!
Let’s put it this way: you enjoy getting mail, right?
Well, what if to get that mail, you had to not have it delivered to your door, but to go down to the post office to get it? To remember to make a special trip?
And about one out of five times, it turns out the post office said, “Oh, yeah, we forgot to tell you that this letter existed, so now you look like a jerk for not responding.”
And when you opened that letter up, it said, “I’m really in a bad and depressed place right now, I could use your help” and you realize this was three weeks ago and you wish you could have helped.
Would you then be all like, “Aw, social networking mail is AWESOME?” Or would it be a constant string of you feeling bad about missing emails from people you wanted to help?
This is my way. It’s not a transactive process, not necessarily, but if they want the help then it helps ALL of us to contact me in the method I can be contacted at.
Your experience is not my experience. You probably don’t have strangers ringing you up twice a week to ask you for advice. And I’m happy to give that advice, but am sad when I didn’t see that they requested it in the first place, and sad when I forgot to get back to a message I had to click on a link on that I meant to read later and I forgot.
As I said, you have a solid point regarding your experiences with social media email, particularly its unreliability. It’s not my experience, but I take it for granted that it is yours, now that you’ve explained that that’s part of your problem with it.
Considering I have not had those problems, my scenario is that I have the post office pick up my mail at FedX and UPS and bring it to my door along with my normal mail.
And I’m sorry you’ve missed out on important emails from people who need help. You’re right, I do not have strangers ringing me up for anything.
And though I know you were using hyperbole, I would have to be a fool to think that social networking mail is awesome in any way. 🙂 My way around it is just different than yours.