In wanting a snappy email address, I gained immortality.
She’s called Tina and Teri and Tula and Tremaine. (She is also a he.) Her friends call her Papou. (Zoe does, at least.) She’s mother to Clinque, born in 2012. She lives in Detroit and Chicago (maybe Alabama too) and is involved with the Mosaic Youth Theatre, but in what capacity, I’m not sure. She knows a Timothy who’s desperate for a job reference. She recently signed up to cable TV/internet bundle, through Verizon AND Xfinity, which will cost around $100 a month and $119.95 a month (HBO included for two years with the latter). She needs to get her TV fixed but it’s covered by a Sears Protection Agreement, so thankfully won’t cost her. A father wants to say ‘hay’. And a friend (who emails with a Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone) wants to know how she’s feeling, for Tina and Teri and Tula and Tremaine, or one of them at least, recently suffered a stroke and is bed-ridden.
My name is Tom Mitchell. But I am also Tina. And Teri. And Tula. And Tremaine. And others too. They are TMitchell and I am TMitchell and (s)he is TMitchell and we are both legion and a single email address, briefly mine:
I don’t remember where I read about Yahoo’s ‘dream email’ offer, probably by half-reading tech journalism whilst on the crapper, but I do remember thinking such a recycling service to be that rarest of things in the digital age: a good idea. Imagine the myriad email addresses owned by the dead, forgetful, and married. Some of these bastards would be holding MY dream address in their rigor mortis grip – a simple address, something like my name. It would save me the indignity of using thomascharlesmitchell@gmail.com, an address of which only a mother could feel pride. Good marketing, Yahoo, I thought. Count me in.
MISTAKE. And, finally, at the age of thirty-five, I realize that there ain’t no thing as a good idea in the digital age.
So here is a website. It enables you to enter your ‘dream’ email address. I went with ‘tmitchell’ because my name is Tom Mitchell and I’ve never had much of an imagination. This done, I clicked off to Facebook and Twitter and the endless tedium of clicking, expecting nothing, knowing full well that the internet is founded on broken dreams. Literally. Maybe, in a distant sci-fi utopia, I might receive notification that my email address was available, but by then the medium will seem as quaintly anachronistic as the telegram and I’d be dead anyway. Or a robot.
But I was wrong. The wait was brief — a couple of months – and I was not dead. Literally. ‘Your email address is available,’ I was told and my heart leapt because this was the birth of a future of quick, painless emailing and informing people (cool dudes, potential employers) of a quick, painless email address.TMitchell@yahoo.com — a new streamlined me. Like professional. Women might assume I’d been sufficiently prophetic to grab such a sexy address in the nascent internet age (whilst in primary school) and judge me a visionary and so find me attractive. Score.
I set up the new account to forward messages to the unwieldy thomascharlesmitchell@gmail.com, an account that knew too many of my secrets to completely divorce.
And so it began. THE MESSAGES. None intended for me, the real T Mitchell, but loads of voices from the ether, searching for the dead, the double, the past. A mistuned radio. The chatter before a concert. Vignettes of others’ lives. Stuff. Crapola, as Philip Roth puts it.
First contact: a reference request from Timothy, sent through an recruitment agency with a ‘donotreply’ email. It was addressed to ‘Tom’ and I assumed it spam. Even if it were genuine, if you’re asking me for a reference, Tim, it’s not the sort of job you want. I deleted the email, so too the ‘Beyond the Rack’ inventory clearance alert, doubting both its offer of crazy discounts and its claim I’d requested these newsletters. I have never worn Gucci. Not even knock-off Gucci. My sole criteria for buying clothes? Comfort. (And occasionally irony.)
More spam: the tangible and instant consequence of this new me. Damn you, Yahoo. I hadn’t signed up for this. I felt an adulterous guilt for deserting Gmail. I was a fool to ever smile upon other email providers. Hubris, the email Gods were Iago-ing me. Maybe the whole venture had been established by Google to thin-out the turncoats like me? They’re clever, are multi-national tech giants. Check out how much tax they pay.
And then Zoe emailed and my irritation turned to bed-sheet worry that I was actively doing a bad thing that might hurt people and bring shame on my name (TMitchell).
Hey papou, I heard about your stroke, dont worrie im bed ridden too. I got a concusion two days ago hows everything going hope your feeling better. Love capa cola
Hmm … I thought. That’s not spam and that’s not good. It felt voyeuristic. And not in the good ex-girlfriend Facebook way.
Reaction: I should definitely reply from the TMitchell address because Zoe sounded a nice person and I didn’t want her thinking Papou would ignore such a sweet message.
I typed:
Thanks for your concern. I hope your concussion gets better. I’m feeling OK but your email made me feel better. Love Papou xxx
But I didn’t send it, the warning klaxons of my conscience blaring wildly. I’d seen sufficient films to know that even a well-meaning assumption of another’s identity inevitably leads to car chases and gun violence. I didn’t fancy either.
Instead, I wrote:
I think you’ve got the wrong email address. I’ve not had a stroke. Hope you’re feeling better.
Tom
But I didn’t send this either. I didn’t want to admit I’d read Zoe’s message. I didn’t want to compromise the friendship. I didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t want to appear a Peeping Tom.com. They’d have each other’s numbers, surely? (When later telling my wife about this, she was surprised: I should have contacted Zoe. But, you know, I didn’t want to step out from the curtain. I’m naturally introverted. Fuss is not something I like to cause.)
I deleted Zoe’s message and did what any thirty-something Londoner would do. In between less weighty pub conversation, I told a friend what had happened. He sipped his beer as he listened.
He reckoned the whole thing was a scam set up by Nigerians.
I tried to forget Papou. My racist friend was probably right. As the internet grows in sophistication, so too does the scamming. I’d not feel guilty. I’d not done anything wrong. Not really. And Papou was a weird name, a spammer’s fiction. Nobody was called Papou, even as a nickname. I kept telling myself this. A mantra.
Another email: ‘It’s time to get excited, Teri Mitchell. Your FiOS installation is only days away.’ And it arrived as heavenly balm to my enflamed guilt. TMitchell couldn’t be in too much of a bad way if she had organized TV, Internet, and Voice Services to be installed on Monday September 09, 2013, technician arrival window 8:00 am to 5:00pm (local time).
Her name was Teri, then. It was as if we’d been introduced. Teri Mitchell, stroke victim. Teri Mitchell, helpless victim of identity theft. Teri Mitchell.
‘Londoner Claims Not To Have Done Anything Wrong,’ the Detroit Free Press would scream.
Emails continued. A broken faucet, someone else’s water. I deleted them as soon as they arrived, praying they were the last throes of a dying address. Soon, I was sure, they would dry up. And I could start using the address to develop the world’s understanding of how professional I was, being the owner of such a professional-looking email address.
‘Your child has registered on Stardoll.com’, a message from Detroit’s Mosaic theatre company confirming a rehearsal schedule, multiple attempts to change the account’s password.
I tried to avoid imagining the real, sick TMitchell lying across her couch, stroke paralytic, her child missing rehearsals. Poor Teri, she had cable TV and a supportive friend, but, inadvertently or not, I’d stolen something of hers and felt obliged to hand it back. I felt Victorian. I felt the guilt of the British Empire. It weighed me down.
And then …
Hi Tina,
just to say hay.
Please advise receiving it.
yr dad.
So now I was preventing a father from contacting his daughter. Yahoo had turned me evil, divider of families. The poor man. Maybe he was mute? Maybe he couldn’t use a phone? Maybe the TMitchell email address was the only way he could contact Tina? I was ruining people’s lives. I was evil. What would myfather say? What would …
Wait … Tina? Her name. Not Teri? Not Tom? Not Papou? Was this the same TMitchell? Epiphany: could there be more than one TMitchell? The father’s surname wasn’t Mitchell. Was his daughter the stroke victim, not the mother with a new TV deal? His tone was a bit off if she were. (Maybe he was like that, though. I didn’t know the guy.) Or was his daughter the mother of a tiny actor? Or someone else? Or all the same? How to find out?
I counted three TMitchells for sure, myself not included.
Although I was quickly being drawn into a noirish cyberpunk fantasy, I had never wanted to play eMarlow. I had never wanted to know private details from other people’s lives. Not even in real life. No gossiping around the water dispenser for me. Not unless it’s really juicy and I’m really thirsty. I only ever wanted a snappy email address, for fuck’s sake.
I thought of emailing the theatre, the friend, the father. But, again, contact felt intrusive and I wasn’t sure what I’d say.
I received another reference request addressed to ‘Tom’ from an increasingly desperate Timothy:
This is a friendly reminder that I am pursuing a career opportunity and I’m asking you, as well as several other individuals, to complete this request as a professional reference.
This was the ice-pick to the ice-block, TMitchell’s identity splintering further. In quick succession, I received an email from Walmart, addressed to a Tremaine Mitchell, who lived in Chicago. And then one to a Tula with a service address located in Alabama. Although I’m British, I understand it to be quite a trek between Alabama and Illinois. Conclusion: we TMitchells were many and all claiming the same email address, but it was an email address only I could access, an email address guilt-polluting only my primary account.
I entered, in Google, the phrase ‘yahoo contact details’. This led me to a ‘help’ page with Yahoo UK’s Shaftesbury Avenue address and a customer service telephone number. I rang the number. The sympathetic woman on the other end suggested it would be better to email. LOL. I returned to Yahoo’s ‘help’ page and followed the link for contact about Yahoo Mail. This led to a general help page for mail services. I clicked on the ‘quick link’ labeled ‘contacting customer care’, and moved through options for selecting product, version and category of account type and problem. I selected ‘abuse and spam’, which led me to four ‘quick answers’ but no contact email.
I tried different options, but was always directed back to a series of ‘quick answer’ webpages, describing what to do if you’d forgotten your password etc. I gave up trying to contact Yahoo. I assume that’s Yahoo’s preferred outcome.
That very night, I received two further emails from the TMitchell account – thanks from CenturyLink services for ‘my interest’ and another password reset request.
Defeated, I withdrew. I unselected the account’s forwarding option, deciding to abandon the address. What option did I have? In time, I imagine Yahoo will gift it to another wide-eyed dreamer with the surname ‘Mitchell’ and a first name beginning with the letter T. Poor, poor ingénue. And the cycle will begin once again. Perhaps this individual will receive emails meant for me. I look forward to joining the massed ranks of past claimants to TMitchell@yahoo.com. We live largely in the States. We have families and health problems. We like watching TV. And we’re all dying. But, one consolation, our email address will live forever, immortalized by Yahoo’s incompetence.
I wanted a snappy email address, but I gained immortality.
