Flirting with danger ooh oooh

The last post has got me (and many other news outlets, as the lawyer story continues to get picked up) thinking about email blunders. There has been some fantastic stories of the havoc that electronic communication can wreak. Email me if you have one.

Unfortunately, I have been a part of one or two examples.

A particularly traumatizing email incident occurred my sophomore year of college. It was finals week, and I was, to say the least, stressed the fuck out. It was late in the (dark & stormy) night and I was glued to the computer chair with the faulty beginnings of a final paper, that was due the next day, taunting me on the screen. I was at that point in finals week when you are just plain desperate, and you do- to the utmost- the tasks you normally avoid (cleaning your room, doing laundry, reading your high school yearbook, flossing and brushing your teeth for a solid five minutes...). Needless to say, I was checking my email approximately every two and a half minutes.

As I indulged in distraction, desiring only the small oasis from stress a good email can provide, I found another sort in my inbox; an email from my Spanish professor. My professor chose that moment to email the class a long list of what would be on the final exam, which was slated for the next week. She also chose to put everything there was on the final exam (as far as I could tell), and made the list in CAPITAL LETTERS. It was an intimidating list no matter how you looked at it, but with the capital letters, the list appeared to rage at me and to belittle my every effort in the Spanish language. I couldn't take it and I absolutely had to comment on its awfulness by forwarding it to my friend that was in the class and stating that capital letters were mean and the professor was annoying. I have to admit using a perhaps excessive amount of exclamation points after both these statements. Anyway, the email whisked away into cyberspace and I got back to my dismal paper.

It was a long night of writing, but I finished the damn thing, handed it in, and went about my day. It was late afternoon by the time I returned to my room and checked my email again.

I can still clearly recall the frozen moment of fear that jolted me as I spied an email from my Spanish professor awaiting me in my inbox, an email titled: Re: Re: FINAL EXAM. I dialed my friend's number as I opened the email, hoping against hope it was an elaborate joke. However, upon reading it, I realized it was no joke, that I had in fact emailed directly back to my professor and unleashed my final exam frustration on that unsuspecting woman. She said, in full lowercase, she "didn't know capital letters were mean." I left my friend a message, of myself screaming. And screaming. At least I knew I got the right phone number.

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...Even telling this story has got me thinking about the ease of creating new verbs the internet has wrought. The internet is so new it requires a whole new set of language. Crazy. I mean, television changed everything and it can't begin to claim all those new verbs!
To google. To friendster. To blog. To tag.
The longer we live with The Internet the more it becomes the stuff of science fiction.

Another thing I've been considering lately is the professional consequences of having an online self. For example, a friend of mine got a writing job recently, and her new employer told her that there were many qualified candidates, but he googled them all and she had the most impressive results. This, though positive, also brought chills down my spine. It is a smart thing for an employer to do. But eventually, a new version of padding the resume will be creating a false online self for employers to stumble upon. Then how will you separate the successful doppelgangers from the actual online selves, if those can be called actual?

Furthermore, if you are relatively young and living in the fully blogged area of New York City, there's a good chance at this moment, and an ever increasing likelihood, that your prospective employer would, if they looked hard enough, stumble upon a tale of some drunken exploit or revealing photo or hookup story or -something- regarding their candidate- which would negate all the trouble you took with that fancypants suit, obsequious attitude, and smooth hairdo.

I guess the moral of the story is that this is some dangerous territory being created. Beware!