I get nearly a hundred emails each day, not counting spam or other stuff that gets filed or thrown away before I see it. I am not unusual in this regard; I know people who get much more.
I’ve gotten a lot of email every day for a long time. I’ve been using email since before most people even knew it existed–back before The Web was The Net, and email addresses had exclamation points in them.
But things have changed in the last few years.
I used to get mail from people, and it used to be addressed to me. Now nearly all of my mail is from corporate entities, addressed in bulk to their customers whose profiles satisfy some criteria, or updates from friends addressed to everyone in their address books. Outside of work, I rarely get email that addressed only to me (or a small set of my cohorts), or that justifies a personal answer. It’s unusual when I get more than two or three of these per day, and even more unusual when they’re from anyone except my family or a small group of close friends.
From what I have heard, I am not unusual in this regard either.
We’ve stopped writing to each other, and started broadcasting. Because we’re broadcasting (whether tweeting, updating our facebook status, or writing blog entries), our messages are not personalized to the recipient; they are broad and generic. And, thanks to things like retweeting and ‘liking’ things on facebook, the messages often aren’t even our own. We’re becoming scripted.
We’ve become a karaoke culture–we sing other people’s songs to a room filled with a mix of friends, who might not be listening, and near strangers, who might. We are surprised when there is any response to our singing other than polite applause at the end, because we usually don’t invite much interaction.
I don’t like it, and I’d like to see the trend reversed. Or at least I’d like to see it fought against.
I realize that it might seem ironic to write a blog entry about how much I don’t like blog entries, but misses the point. Blogs, facebook updates, tweets, etc, all have their place. They’re useful for announcing things, and that has true value. But it isn’t as intimate or as influential as an actual interactive dialog. Have you ever changed your mind about an important issue because one of your friends tweeted their opinion about it? I hope not. Have you ever had your position on an issue changed by having a personal conversation with someone who holds the opposite opinion? I would expect so.
So, here’s a suggestion. Walk through your contact list, and send to whomever you like a short, personal note. You can make a generic template–it’s not cheating. Just make sure that it’s clear that it’s from you, addressed only to them, and that you would like to hear from them.
Let’s start corresponding again.
