Email Is My Social Media
15 May, 2022
(This is an excerpt from an edition of my weekly letter, which appears here via a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.)
Email, to put it bluntly, is my social media.
It’s how I keep in touch with people. I send them a message, not a DM or a post on whatever social media wall they maintain.
Email is how, at least in part, I used to (and might one day again) share ideas with a wider audience. That audience is a small group of people, many of whom I don’t know and who don’t know me.
I get more out of email than I did when I was actively posting on Twitter and Mastodon.
The people with whom correspond don’t bog my email down with the excruciating minutiae of their daily lives — that artisan soda or beer they just drank, photos of a dessert that they’re about to tuck into, what they’re watching at this very moment on their streaming service of choice, cute photos of their pets. Alla that kind of stuff. (OK, I do like the pet photos, but don’t tell them!)
Best of all, my inbox isn’t clogged with misinformation or disinformation. My correspondents only share links to items that they know might pique my interest. Or, sometimes, things which might raise my ire or my gorge — bless ’em! They share important news about themselves or about mutual friends. Our digital correspondence can be light and breezy, but also can be serious and have some depth. We can delve into discussion, debate, and sometimes argument.
When I tell certain people that email is my social media, they’re surprised. Some are even shocked. A few mock me for giving up the potential for the reach and influence that social media can provide. As if I’ve ever been interested in any of that ...