What your email address says about you

One of the equivalences of haircut and clothing on the Internet is your email address.

The old adage that on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog is of course not true—even through the disintermediation of the computer screen and the series of tubes, there are still clues, the equivalents of clothes, accents, and haircuts, for those sensitive enough to spot them (read: nerds).

Apart from your capacity for spelling (seriously, people: red squiggly bad) and grammar, one of the most obvious is your email address. Here are some example personal email addresses and what they say about you:

bob@internet-service-provider.com: I don’t know much about technology so I’m just using the email address my ISP gave me. My soul dies a little every time I check my email through the Web interface, which I have to do since I don’t know how to set up an email client. The kid down the street keeps promising to help me get set up, but it just never seems to happen.

bob-and-amy@internet-service-provider.com: Hoo-boy! We have some trust issues in our marriage!

bob@company-i-work-for.com: I can only keep track of one email system, so I use my company email address for everything. I don’t understand that this means my system administrators can read all my personal email.

bob@aol.com: Technology scares and confuses me. Can’t we all start calling each other again instead of this new-fangled email thing?

bob@yahoo.com: I used to be pretty on top of this technology thing.

bob@hotmail.com: No matter how much everybody tells me to, I’ll never stop using Internet Explorer! The blue “e” means Internet!

bob@gmail.com: I enjoy a good email experience.

bob@bobsmith.com: I’m hip enough to this stuff to have my own domain. I can probably be trusted to not be a complete clue-bird when it comes to technology.

Posted Wednesday, 04 July, 2012 by Nic Lindh

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