an ode to email
Fri, Jun 6, 2025 | 2:50 PM
i've been thinking of how to reach you. and people, in general. i think most of us have mentally checked out of social media. making a tiktok or a reel in search of connection seems silly. text feels a bit more authentic than the exhibitionistic/voyeuristic spectacle of video, but where do people even communicate in writing anymore? twitter was on its deathbed long before elon came to finish it off. i love the energy behind bluesky but sorry, i'm not starting all over again. my shy attempt at launching a blog outside of the clout-o-sphere ended up fulfilling my goal of anti-virality a bit too successfully... so then i considered substack, but being vulnerable on that platform kinda makes me feel like this [a girl attempting to breakdance for (what looks to be) the first time in front of a crowd of uninterested people writing 15,000 word essays.]
a while ago-- actually maybe a few years ago, at this point-- when i was getting really into the (reasonably logical imo?!) idea that the path to utopia was through regression to low tech, i read this article: Obituary, for Ray Tomlinson and Email. (side note: the author, j.b. crawford, writes my favorite newsletter, both about tech and a dizzying array of incredibly niche topics.)
the article explains the outdated (and (thus) unprofitable) system of email very well, but i think you don't need to know much about computer stuff to recognize that email, through its very structure, communicates the values of a different era; an era in which the internet was "not really a business, but a research venture" that "ran on magic, and no one talked about ROI." it was the most straightforward solution to a problem that was occurring within a small community whose goal was simply to communicate with each other. and i was like... isn't this exactly my issue right now?
in the end, email appears to be the simplest solution. it might be a boring old technology, but we will probably never get a communication platform as straightforward and obvious as this again, since it's virtually impossible now for any tech venture to remain unscathed by monetization and scalability. at the risk of sounding like a boomer waxing poetic about simpler times, email holds within it the magic of a slower era... i like that it's still acceptable to reply to an email a few days late without being demonized for it, that you can send a long text without becoming a "long texter," that there is no nefarious addiction feedback loop embedded within the system, aside from the pure desire to know what information one has received from another person. the pace and flexibility of email is still human.
the medium is the message, as our bestie mcluhan said. in a time of needless content, paying attention to the forms it takes feels like a matter of dire importance to me. (to the point that it has paralyzed my output for the better part of a decade… i was moaning and groaning about the same shit in 2017!! for christ's sake…) so here we go. honestly the idea that a copy of this email is going to be permanently archived in your inbox, collecting dust there like a digital tombstone for the rest of our lifetimes, makes me feel physically ill. i am heaving as i press the send button. but in the words of the representative existential meme of the 2010s: "if we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known."
i still hate this as much as i hated it when i first read it but i am going to allow myself to pursue... the rewards of being loved, sure, but i guess, more fundamentally, the opportunity to exist beyond the shell of my own skin. so, while i can't promise that i won't end up completely contradicting myself and shilling myself out on social media in a few months anyway, since, unfortunately, i need to find a way to make money to live, i'll be shooting these emails out sporadically until the end of the year as an exercise in remembering what my voice sounds like when i'm not standing on a digital podium, and as an attempt at deepening relationships with myself, the world, and you all, through a medium that is as clunky and stubborn as i am.
in closing, and in keeping with my romanticization of retro tech, here is a little pixel gif of the VT220, released in 1983, which is the inspiration for the font Workbench, which i am currently using on my website. the font creator has shared an extremely technical behind the scenes look at the research that went into making the font, all of which totally flies over my head, but it's still cool to see how much attention to detail went into it. the earlier VT100 has super cute blue lettering, which happily aligns with the blue-screen-of-death blue i've been using for various graphics illustrating my painful journey towards self-branding (vom). the VT220 is also the origin of the inverted T-shape arrow cluster, still on our keyboards today!
some final notes:
-feel free to reply to me! i might respond like a month later, but that's the beauty of email, right?
-if we hang out or talk in real life, your name might pop up in some of my writings. i pledge to use common decency and will swap out names where appropriate, but in general no one is safe. love & respect <3