November 9 - 16, 2000
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One of the things I've appreciated most about the Internet revolution is that people are finally writing to one another again. Diatribes, memos, chain letters, porn jokes, mash notes . . . you name it. We're writing like a nation of reborn scribes. Although the content and spelling in these e-mails often leave much to be desired, I applaud the shift, especially since it has led to the rebirth of a custom that's been largely abandoned in the past two decades: thank-you notes. Thanks 2000
E-mail breeds familiarity breeds contempt
by Kris Frieswick
My mother taught me the importance of sending handwritten thank-you notes, and I always loved getting them. They tell the recipient that he or she is worth the time it takes to sit down and write something on paper, stamp it, and go to the post office. But the '80s and '90s saw the virtual death of this fine habit, because we all got too busy, lazy, inconsiderate, or all of the above. Then along came e-mail and, bam, I've got thank-you notes coming out the wazoo. These expressions of gratitude have come roaring back into popularity, thanks to e-mail's immediacy and no-cost status. Sure, an e-mail thank-you note is less formal, but it's the thought, not the medium, that counts.
Like all good things, however, this rebirth of thank-you notes has one teensy drawback. E-mail messages are an excellent example of what happens when you mix human emotion and technology. You get a thing that resembles Jeff Goldblum after he goes through the DNA Cuisinart in The Fly. That's because the etiquette-conscious citizen of the new millennium has little time for long, effusive, handwritten declarations of undying gratitude. Today, the name of the game is quick and dirty but, you know, sincere. And this is what you end up with:
TO: kbishop@tepidmail.comFROM: Jims@getsome.com
SUBJECT: thx babe
K - Thx. U rock my wirld. -- J
Just makes you all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it? Although they seriously redefine the concept of "thank-you note," these quick, misspelled, often unintelligible e-mails are still wonderful to receive, as long as they're from good friends -- i.e., you finish each other's sentences, drink from the same glass, and spend the occasional night crashed on each other's couches. In these cases, this whacked-out form of correspondence is perfectly acceptable, and very sweet.
What bother me are the potential thank-you e-mails of the future. Now that it's so frictionless to create and send, e-mail has lulled a lot of folks into a false sense of familiarity with the people they are thanking. In many cases, these recipients really deserve something more -- more respectful; more formal; at the very least, more grammatically correct. Instead, thank-you e-mailers often write in a style that implies that they funneled Heffenreffers with the recipient at a recent kegger.
But as the laws of physics teach us, a trend set in motion is likely to stay in motion, and I predict that we will soon be seeing e-mails that go a little something like this:
TO: Bill@JacksonLampreyVentureInvestments.comFROM: JimSmith@shitforsale.com
SUBJECT: Thanks 12 million!
Hey guys - Just wanted to say THANKS AGAIN for the additional $12 million in private equity funding. Man, when we IPO'd last March, I never wood have dreemed that we'd ever dip below 3. But, hey, I gess that's the breaks. So anyway, thx again. Boy, things were getting pritty hairy there for a few weeks. Hopefly, the staff will be willing to come back to work. I think a couple of them are temping locally, so we'll be back up and running again in no time. See you at the bord meeting next week! I'll bring the beer.
Thanking a party host via e-mail is, in my opinion, a fine use of technology, since you're obviously already friends, or at least casual acquaintances. But who knows? In a year, we may be seeing party thank-yous like this:
TO: buckstopshere@whitehouse.gov FROM: SandraSmith@ArizonaTeachersAssocn.com RE: What a Ball!
Dude - I can't believe how hard we partied last night. Thank you so much, you knucklehead . . . I'm TOTTALLY spoiled for all future Inaugural balls. You and the First Babe looked fab, grub was great -- band kinda sucked, but whaddaya gonna do. Keep in touch and next time keep those presidential mitts away from the Oysters Rockefeller, you naughty boy -grrrr -- ;-) Sandy
Because of the way e-mail provides immediate access to anybody, I predict that certain people will soon come to believe that the entire world belongs to their personal posse, and can be addressed in the monosyllabic, misspelled, mangled prose reserved for truly great friends. In fact, the last bastion of written thank-you notes, the wedding-gift acknowledgment, is already falling victim to the casual e-mail trend. I know of at least one bride who recently sent out her thank-you notes via e-mail. I'm sure the bride's busy schedule allowed some of her guests to forgive her egregious lapse of etiquette, but I myself would not have looked kindly on a message that probably read something like this:
TO: kcarter@yeehaa.comFROM: jcontralto@netmaileroo.com
SUBJECT: Wedding thnx babe
MESSAGE: K - Thx. The new set of Calphalon rocks my wirld. -- J
Kris Frieswick can be reached at krisf1@gte.net.
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