Rant #1,636: I Got the Email Blues

Electronic mail, better known as email, was a revelation when people first got hooked up to the Internet.

You could actually get mail on a daily basis--incredible!

We were so hooked into regular mail--which became known as snail mail, for its slowness--that email was a revelation.

We could get messages day and night, night and day, 365 days a year--or even on leap day, like we had this year--and we could communicate with people when we wanted to about what we wanted to.

And companies got hold of this, and once they got your email, you were hooked.

Spam programs took a lot of this out of sight, but sometimes because of our own doing--signing up for things--we would get ad after ad after ad of stuff ...

And that is what has happened to email today.

With other ways of "instant" messaging--through various points such as Facebook and texting from phones--what is email for today, anyway?

I make these observations as I look at my own email, which I get through Yahoo.

Every once in a while, I get messages that are somewhat important, things I need to know from friends, family and even some companies.

But I have found that a lot of my email is junk, garbage, ads from companies that I don't care about.

Yes, I did sign up for some advertising missives, but it seems that they have multiplied like rabbits over the years.

Once you sign up for one, you get many.

And oftentimes, when you opt out of certain emails that you don't want--as I did a few weeks ago--you get even more spam and junk.

And I don't even look in my spam folder on a daily basis anymore. I guess I got sick of seeing all of those Viagra ads that I didn't ask for, didn't want, and well, didn't need, if you know what I mean.

So where once looking at my emails was an integral part of my day--and still is at work, where my email brings in many of the story ideas that I write about at my job--my personal email is really a compendium of junk, more junk, mixed in with a few messages that I really do want to get, or at least need to read.

Most of my communication today is done through this blog and on Facebook,and for my family, text messaging. It is just so much easier, and the communication is more to the point, or at least to the the point of what I am talking about.

Yes, even in these places I get spam, especially on Facebook, where I go through periods where it seems that every 18-year-old young lady with a big chest to show off in low-cut blouses contacts me to friend me--nothing pornographic here, but why would such a young lass want anything to do with me?

They get deleted immediately, and happily, those types of messages have pretty much stopped, or at least stopped for the time being.

Here, I do get some messages posted, most of the times on topic, but sometimes, I have to delete the messages because they are pathways to viruses and have no reason being here.

So that is the state of my electronic messaging today.

I use it a lot at work, but personally, it really has gone into the dumpster, except for certain instances.

Happily, I have been able to monitor what I get, and I haven't run into too many problems with my email, but I am always on the lookout for garbage, the perpetual "I saw your name on such and such, and I want to meet you, please click here and we can get together" type of garbage.

Yes, sure, let me put heaven knows what on my computer from my new "friend."

No, they got the wrong guy.

Text me if you agree.