Written by Andrew T
“Your e-mail address is probably your most common and basic form of web identity. It is possible for you to not be on Facebook, not have a blog, and not post videos of yourself playing covers of popular songs with your ukulele on Youtube (it’s possible).But as a University of Guelph student, you are guaranteed to have an e-mail address.”
Good Morning Angels,
My first e-mail address was something like (my last name).(my first name)@hotmail.com. Some friends of my mom thought it would be a great idea for my brother, sister, and I to have a Hotmail account, even at the tender ages of…of…I don’t know. We were young. Get off my back.
When I turned thirteen, I—and the rest of the world—decided that I was finally a man, and I picked out my own address with my own password. What was said address?
Enough mystery! I’ll just tell you!
For the longest time friends and family (and strangers too…I guess…) could contact me by sending messages to ‘quantumfury@hotmail.com.’ I know. I know. That’s pretty ballin’.
But then I wanted a job, so I picked up an official sounding Gmail address. But then I hated that, and my Hotmail one, and the smell of used yoga mats, so I got a new address: ‘andrewt.press@gmail.com.’ Honestly, I would’ve changed to anything from studmeister2 to studmeister221, but then I thought, “If I can’t be studmeister1, then why even bother? And not just bother with e-mail, but with life and stuff, and democracy in general?”
That’s a scary dark road that I cannot go down again—much like Elizabeth St.—so I went with something that was a bit closer to my heart: My own name. Secretly, I believe that studmeister1 is currently the address of ex-Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who sends me e-mails FROM THE GRAVE!!!
So why am I telling you all about e-mail addresses?
I’ll tell you! No mystery!
It’s because your e-mail address is probably your most common and basic form of web identity. It is possible for you to not be on Facebook, not have a blog, and not post videos of yourself playing covers of popular songs with your ukulele on Youtube (it’s possible).
But as a University of Guelph student, you are guaranteed to have an e-mail address. Though it may not seem like it, the ‘@uoguelph.ca’ lends a lot of credibility to the e-mails you send. It says that you’re a professional. It says that you’re a smart cookie. Quantumfury says none of those things. All it says is that I may or may not be the name of the Millenium Falcon’s douchebag brother. Now, I know that the Millenium Falcon didn’t have a brother, as it is a highly modified YT-1300 light freighter (not a human), and the closest thing to it’s original design concept is Princess Leia’s Tantive IV. I know that. Get off my back.
But your e-mail address is actually a huge part of your web identity, and I think it should reflect a large part of who you are in real life.
Maybe you noticed that this column is signed as ‘Andrew T’, and not with my full birth name (unless you thought ‘Andrew T’ was my full birth name, which is cool too I guess…but it’s not that). That’s because I’m slowly cultivating an identity based around a pseudonym, much like how a farmer cultivates crops around a barn.
Yes? No?
Regardless, anything that I do under Andrew T (be it this column, that column, my radio show, literally anything else I’ll write non-academically) is marginally separated from my academic work, my banking records, my health records, my driving records, or how I sign my uncle’s birthday card—usually with a hearty ‘From Andrew.’
Sure the internet is a great place to be anonymous, but I recommend being anonymous in a way that makes you look cool.
When I first got a Twitter account, my username was ‘Desirefortiger.’ I came up with this identity in the early 2000s, and to this day I still think it’s brilliant. Like, so smart! I think it’s one of the smartest, most clever things that has ever come out of my head, and I will use it until the day I die. It’s my fallback web identity for buying things on Ebay, or naming my blogs (desirefortiger.wordpress.com and desirefortiger.tumblr.com). But when I first got Twitter and I friended my supervisor Professor Mark Lipton, the message I got back from him was “What is desirefortiger? You like big cats? On Twitter, people usually use their real names. . . How do I know it’s you?” I mean, of course I like big cats. Who doesn’t? I was actually using ‘Desirefortiger’ for a long time before I admitted to myself that tigers are indeed my favourite animal. Especially Siberian Tigers! They kick so much butt! They kick all the butts!
But Dr. Lipton called me out. Sure, I can have my fun web names, but it’s probably a good idea for people to have a real one to connect it to. Luckily for me I was an early adopter to Twitter, so http://twitter.com/Andrew_T was still free (Follow me!).
And yeah, when Facebook got us all to come up with a URL I went with http://www.facebook.com/desirefortiger (Befriend me!), but that’s because it links to Andrew T’s profile. I may comment on forums or blogs through the universal log in of my blogs, but I sign it with Andrew T, and it all links back to one solid identity that I’m happy to stick with. My friend Scott recently commented on a website of mine (www.drivewayfarerdrive.com) as ScottmanJack, and now he’s sad because he’s stuck with it. I don’t want you to be sad. Don’t make the same mistakes Scott does.
Sorry, Scott…