Confessions of a recovering campus e-mail addict
My name is Dawn, and I am an e-mail addict. I just got e-mail
last quarter. I know, I know, I’m so late on the information
superhighway that everyone has left me at the last rest stop, but
can I just express my addiction to the wonderful thing that is the
Internet and those beautiful people at the Office of Academic
Computing who allow students to do this e-mail thing for free?
It all started last September, when I got my Izzy account.
Everyone complains that the "Izzy" thing is so cheeseball, but may
I remind my fellow Bruins who balk at the "Izzy" address that we
could just as well be like those poor fools who must pay for
America Online and all that other stuff? Okay.
When I first got my e-mail account, I was in the honeymoon
phase. You know how it is. You check it every hour, and when you
don’t have mail, you feel personally offended, even hurt. You live
for the "mail waiting" to come up when you log in. You announce
perkily to anyone who will listen, "I have e-mail now!" and collect
other addresses with abandon.
I started e-mailing to friends at other colleges and close
friends here at school. It doesn’t matter if we see each other
every day. Somehow, relationships are cemented on the superhighway.
Sure, we can talk. But if we e- mail, hell, that means something.
We’ve stepped up the ladder one rung closer to "close friend."
It was at this point when it began becoming scary. Checking
e-mail more than once a day became an addiction for me, and friends
would drop me notes just to appease me, such as "I know I will see
you in an hour but I know you want mail so here. Goodbye." I began
slinking into the Math Sciences computer lab as though I was an
Overeaters Anonymous member clutching a fat donut: guilt-ridden but
blissful.
My phone bill dropped dramatically, as I was e-mailing friends
in Berkeley and not calling them as much.
And when just e-mailing your close friends isn’t enough, you can
tap into newsgroups, of which there are hundreds, maybe almost
thousands. My favorites are the Anne Rice fan newsgroup, the
Madonna one and when I’m really bored and I want to get a little
riled up, the one for people who have a fetish for sex with, ahem,
"Orientals." There’s a whole listing of newsgroups for people with
sex fetishes, and the funniest ones are alt.sex.fetish.robots and
alt.sex.fetish.amputees.
I recently began subscribing to the Pilipino student network, so
I can e-mail hundreds of Pilipino students nationwide by posting a
message to pilipinos@uclink.berkeley.edu. I have yet to do this,
since the thought of sending something out for so many eyes to read
is a little daunting. I’ve gotten job announcements, hello messages
and met new and exciting people. The Pilipino culture newsgroup
provides information on Pilipino news, culture, politics and will
even supply the odd leche flan recipe.
And speaking of these new and exciting people you meet doing
e-mail, there’s a whole ‘nother category of e-mail friends you will
accumulate. There are e-mail friends who are not really your
friends, but you know them electronically, so you are kind of
friends but in a cyber sort of way.
I have several of these faceless people who send me junk mail,
messages forwarded from the Asian Pacific student network and stuff
like Neiman Marcus cookie recipes. (Believe it  somebody up
north procured the recipe to Neiman Marcus’ famous cookies and was
inadvertently totally overcharged for it on his Visa. To retaliate,
he was sent the recipe, which cost him $250, to every person he
knows on the Internet. Those people, in turn, sent it to their
friends. The recipe has found its way back to me numerous
times).
But let’s talk about junk mail. Yes, you do get it, and many
times it’s from your close friends who think you’d enjoy reading
something forwarded to them from their best friend at Idaho State,
but, sadly, you’re just not into "The Erotic Adventures of the
Brady Bunch." When I got "The Erotic Adventures of the Brady Bunch"
forwarded to me three times from three friends who all headed the
story with "I thought you of all people would enjoy reading this,"
I knew it was the beginning of the end for me. I had to draw the
line.
There are many more people I know who are more addicted than I
am and for whom being away from a modem is like a serious medical
problem, and to those people, I must say: I know. I know how
addictive and wonderful and loving e-mail can seem for those first
euphoric months, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. You get
bleary-eyed from the computer screen, heart palpitations when no
"mail waiting" blinks at you and seriously disconnected to the
world (though you think you are speaking to it
electronically!).
So to my comrades in addiction, I say: call people once in a
while. Remember what a phone looks like? Use it.
Mabalon, the director of Samahang Pilipino Education and
Retention Project, graduated in June with a bachelor’s degree in
history and Asian American studies. Her column appears on alternate
Wednesdays.