Tech Column for The Wire No. 1
As part of my contribution to Bournemouth University’s student newspaper The Wire, I’ll be writing (amongst other things) a series of columns on technology and general geekery. Columns aren’t something I have a lot of writing experience in so I guess this will be a learning curve as much as anything else. I’ll post some scans/photos of the printed versions of them as soon as they become available.
Hands up if you’ve ever sent an email that’s been wildly misunderstood? Okay, put your hand down now, you’re reading a newspaper - you look like an idiot.
Joking aside, US Company ‘SarcMark’ has an amazing solution to an age-old problem (that was sarcasm, by the way). They’ve come up with a symbol, that for the bargain price of $1.99 (that was also sarcasm, just so you know) you can use on your email platform of choice to denote sarcasm within your emails - how genius is that (again, sarcasm strikes)?
What does the symbol look like, you say? Well, it’s sort-of like an unfinished ‘6’ written backwards with a dot in a middle (does this feel like Pictionary yet?), sort of your like your biro ran out while you were trying to write it. In other words, it looks utterly ridiculous (that wasn’t sarcasm). Besides, have you seen how annoying it is when I tell you when I’m being sarcastic or not?
Why not scrap the idea of making it blatantly obvious and stop insulting people’s intelligence? Sure sarcasm might confuse a few people who are completely blind to it and just end up damn insulted, but then again, who really cares? It’s not massively hard to send another email explaining yourself rather than including some stupid symbol that no one understands anyway.
Besides, the only place where emails seem to get wildly out of control and send people into fits of swearing rage is Bournemouth University - first there was Watergate, then there was Sachsgate, and now there is Surveysgate.
It’s only been a couple of months since the ‘Surveys’ mailing list was set up - the idea being to make it quick and easy for dissertation and research students to fill our inboxes with questionnaires about which type of toothpaste you buy and why - and that’s cool. No honestly, that wasn’t sarcasm, I’m being serious. It’s the best way to distract yourself from anything important for a good few minutes with something that doesn’t really require much thought. I call it chewing gum for the mind. But the whole thing was a little bit short-sighted.
What IT services failed to remember was that BU students are on the whole, ruthless marketing geniuses, and setting up an email address for everyone is kind-of like allowing people to stand at the back gate and hand out flyers for just about every club night going…oh, wait.
Point is, whatever system is set up, there’ll always be spam. Spam is part of email itself, it just happens. Deal with it. Don’t get all angry and start telling people where to stick their adverts for jobs or flats, just treat it like any other spam email. You wouldn’t start sending angst-y replies to the guy that emails you telling you about ‘the one pill that’ll really impress your girlfriend tonight’ or how he can get you every drug under the sun for just a few dollars would you? Repeat after me, delete and ignore. Now, that wasn’t so hard was it?
Hey, can someone make a punctuation mark for when I’m being patronising but don’t really mean it one bit?
