Thursday, January 25, 2007

Did I fall asleep and wake up back in 1997?

Yesterday, I received an email from an old girlfriend of mine. We don't really keep all that much in touch anymore but, 5 or 6 years ago, we were pretty tight. For the most part, we're on each other's blast email lists, getting only the news that is important enough to be distributed to every single person listed in the Address book.

So I opened the email with interest. Maybe she was getting married or having a kid. But no. It was just an email address update. In it, she said, "My new email is randomhalfnakedanimecharacter_birthday. I had to get rid of my old address (collegenickname_lastinitial) because it just wasn't me anymore. Please update your address books accordingly."

First of all, I can't believe that folks still believe that their email address has something to do with their internal identity. I mean, frankly, in this day and age of spam blockers, if you want to converse with people you actually know, you should stick to an email that at least resembles your actual name. If you are trolling online for netsex, okay, sure, I can see why some sexy anime character might help you out. But when writing Mom, Grandpa and your old co-workers? Curious.

And second, well, I guess I can understand why she now wants to distance herself from her college nickname. It's been a lot of years and perhaps she no longer wants to think of herself as a many-drink-imbibing, party animal kind of girl. But how the hell does some objectified anime character now represent her more than a name she was actually given in person? Hell, how does one go through the process of deciding an anime character, especially a pathetic, scantily-clad one, is more "her"?

I am obviously thinking way too much about this.

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