Everything’s changing in 2010. Since the inception of the internet, all e-mail addresses have been rendered in Latin script — presumably because of either brutal Western imperialism, or Mandarin not having an @ sign. As of next year, however, the first internationalised domain names come into effect — meaning e-mail addresses can now be entirely in Chinese, Arabic or Russian script. And probably, at some later point, authentic Tolkein Elvish, if all the software programmers I’ve met so far are a widely representative bunch.
But while it will obviously be deeply thrilling to have such exotic-looking e-mails dropping into our inboxes — like the 21st-century equivalent of getting a postcard with a Spanish stamp on — it’s not as if our inboxes aren’t already full of intrigue and backstory. Every time I get an e-mail, I make wide, swingeing assumptions about the sender — purely based on their e-mail address. Thus:
Yahoo/Hotmail. As the hip, free e-mail services of the Millennium, finding people still with Yahoo and Hotmail in 2009 is a bit like meeting someone wearing combat trousers who’s really into All Saints. Over the past decade, these addresses have come to look a trifle . . . shabby. Of course, Yahoo and Hotmail have every right to be angry about this unwitting slide into obsolescence: the idea of “hot mail” is, obviously, quite exciting, and Yahoo’s name was presumably inspired by the most vibin’ actor 1988 had to offer — Yahoo Serious, star of Young Einstein. Their logic was diamond-hard.
But with a combined total of 550 million customers, Hotmail and Yahoo’s popularity has ultimately proved their downfall. Howsowhy? Well, imagine you’re a new customer, and you want to have the coolest e-mail address ever — which would be, obviously, thefonz@hotmail.com. So you go to sign up for it. Over the next two hours of agonising, ongoing name-revision, in the face of multiple alerts informing you “Sorry, but that name is already taken,” you would finally end up with thefonz6000000@hotmail.com. At which point, it would be marginally cooler to communicate with the world by writing your message on a vest, wrapping it round a rock and throwing it through someone’s window, while shouting “MY SCABS TASTE LIKE BACON!”
Gmail. Of course, Hotmail and Yahoo’s big problem is Gmail, which is also free, but — unlike Yahoo and Hotmail — is where all the cool kids are at right now. Slick, fast, full of useful apps and essentially like a cross between Topshop and the Millennium Falcon, Gmail has users who consequently radiate an air of having sent their e-mail while midway through a skateboarding trick, on their way to a secret gig by La Roux — despite being, in reality, freelance arts graduates caning off the free wifi in Starbucks.
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Mac.com. In a world of almost infinite domain-names, plumping for Mac.com seems a bizarre choice: as if the owner is answering a question no one had asked them. Ever. Each e-mail sent screams “YES — I HAVE A MAC. I HAVE NO RIGHT CLICK BUTTON. DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT?” It is peace time, mac.com people. You no longer have to give your name, rank and number every time you send an e-mail. And the information you seem so desperate to convey is arbitrary, at best. You might as well be sending e-mails from myfrontdoorisredactually.com. My sister, who works in IT, comments: “The general observation among ‘my community’ is that these people are invariably bumptious media buffoons, who should be aware that anyone receiving their e-mail on a PC will instantly hate them and put their e-mail request right at the back of the queue. Even if it’s for emergency first-aid techniques.Yeah.”
ac.uk. Obviously the address of either students or academics, an “ac.uk” radiates a pleasingly old-fashioned vibe: as if this were the prototype e-mail system that was created by some wizardy old professor in 1676, and run using a system of almost infinitely numbered wooden pigeonholes, in a turret, with a sign saying “The Entire-net” on the door, in copperplate. The fact that everyone’s ac.co.uk addresses are something impenetrable, such as lc405088 @cam.ac.uk, only adds to the medieval vibe. Those letters and numbers at the front are, in fact, the sender’s alchemic composition, as calculated through the modish grimoires of the time.
Blueyonder/BTinternet/Virgin. The easiest and most hand-holding e-mail addresses that it’s possible to set up, these mark out, with almost carbon-dateable precision, accounts opened between 2001 and 2005. And by the kind of earnest, well-meaning person who imagined that, when he finally “got” “the internet”, the whole family would gather round it looking at fabulous high-res pictures of flamingos on nationalgeographic.com.
Alas, six years later, they’re still looking at the flamingos on nationalgeographic. com — “The amazing colour apparently comes from the shrimps they eat, Elaine!” — while upstairs, their teenage daughter runs a live sex webcam service via a proxy server account, re-routed through the Ukraine. These people will never change their e-mail account. It would take a social revolution on a scale of the Shah being deposed in Iran for them to consider shifting to Gmail. Should mankind ever master the technology for immortality, you could safely e-mail someone with a blueyonder account in the year 3022, knowing they would have kept that address for the past 1013 years.
Own domain name. The own domain-name address marks you out as the aristocracy of the internet. Toffs never live in something as common as a road, or a virgin.com — it’s simply “Send the truffle hamper to Falconbury/ stephenfry.com” and that’s the end of that.
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Self-titled domain names do, however, come with their own problems. For should someone else at your cyber-Falconbury wish to piggyback on to your account, the resultant address can look a little bizarre.
Bernard@stephenfry.com looks a little . . . crowded. A bit ... parasitic. Like those 34-year-old men who go for a routine operation, only to find their fossilised dead foetus-twin wedged deep inside their guts. But with an e-mail address.
AOL. Whenever I see the e-mail address “aol.com”, I must do all I can not to cross myself — like I’ve just seen the Devil in a tree. For AOL is Dark Magic, from the Old Days — like, 1999 or something. A time when the internet consisted of a mere four pages — one of which was that dead whale being blown up with dynamite. Ah, dead internet whale of 1999. You are my cyber-madeleine.
AOL’s tactic was to keep its newly signed customers in a hermetically sealed, rigorously safeguarded AOL online world. Consequently, anyone still on AOL in 2009 lives in a quantumly different version of the internet to the rest of us. They have, to all intents and purposes, spent the past ten years in AOL’s Austrian basement, wondering what the sunlight of the real internet really feels like.
Addendum: I have just looked in my inbox and searched for e-mails from AOL accounts. There are only two: one is from an hotel in the remotest part of the Scottish Highlands; and the other is from Courtney Love. Ipso facto gazebo.