Junk Male (2009)

 Is it me, or is it getting increasingly more difficult to get responses from emails sent, these days. Just recently I have sent off a number of emails, to a variety of people, for the first time, foolhardily expecting, at the very least, some small acknowledgement from them, a ‘read receipt’ perhaps, or some consideration for my time spent trying to communicate.

Just because some fool hardy nanobot spammer, no doubt intent on causing the most grievous and malicious mischief, decided to send out emails offering ways to make you ‘stay longer’ or to ‘increase you size’; mail, which was once, in a dim and now distant universe, a welcome letter for someone unknown to you, suddenly becomes unwanted junk mail.

Sending emails to people, you do or do not know, for the very first time is now fraught with all kinds of difficulties. Are you on their accredited list. Does their mail client approve you. Are any of the words used in your email, a potential threat to their security. Chances are, if your mail is not expected, your hard written letter written to a potential editor, begging for work, will end up in their junk mail, amidst the amazing opportunities to make lots and lots of cash, from Mr Odebayo from South Africa, and deleted - unread.

It is difficult enough to solicit a response from people you do know, without having to try to contact someone you do not know, for the very first time. Even people that you may have previously corresponded with, but who have ‘forgotten’ to put you on their email client ‘safe’ list, may not respond to your emails, leaving you wondering – was it a slight, or did they just not receive your email. Because junk mail tends to remain unopened, a ‘read receipt’ is seldom of much use to you, and you are then, left wondering. On the other hand, am I beginning to sound a little paranoid.

This, of course, is one of the major problems with the ease of sending an email, whether from your personal, neatly designed, lightweight laptop, or from your 3G, grossly expensive hand phone - it is just not that easy to have your mail read. For it is just as easy to block, or divert email now as it is to write and sent one - easier in fact.

In an ideal world, every piece of communication from you would be matched by an equal piece of communication from someone, responding to you. Sadly, this does not happen in the real, 21^st century, world. What with spam filters, junk mail filters, Trojan guards and anti-virus/spyware guards, getting an email into someone else’s mail in-box, is like getting into Fort Knox. I imagine, because I, for one, have never actually been able to get into Fort Knox

It has become a truism that frequently the things man creates to make life easier, repeatedly tends to make life more difficult. Maybe we should all revert to snail mail, spend time writing letters, putting them into envelopes, writing addresses, licking stamps and posting them. But, there again, with no receipt we are back where we started, left wondering. Wondering – did the postman/woman collect and deliver the mail safely, did the recipient actually get the mail, did it get past their secretary and the grey spray-painted metallic waste bin. If they got it - did they read it, if they read it, will they respond and so on and so forth, ad nauseum.

Trying to communicate, in this world of increasing divers ways of communicating, seems ever fraught with difficulties.