Step By Step, Oooh Baby

Changing my email address has been an interesting sociological experiment.

Mostly on myself, because I am what one might call “change-averse.” One might also call me “pathologically terrified of doing things differently” without fear of overstatement. But I’m trying, and I’m slowly getting used to this.

I’ve switched from Yahoo! to Gmail. And it really is different. Without being boring, Gmail organizes and stores and sorts your mail in different ways than any other email program I’ve used and so, at least at first, it’s counterintuitive. However, while it’s unlike regular email, it is a lot like an instant message conversation, and so I am getting the hang of it. (Slowly.)

But the slowness is okay, because I’m using both emails for a while, since I am a bit nervous about changing all my subscriptions for fear of stalkers and spam and other bad things.

However.

The other result of this switch is that I’ve realized that many of the people I have the honor of knowing, frankly suck at following directions.

One of the problems with Gmail is that you can’t import an address book (at least not yet). The only way that addresses get saved is if you send someone an email. What I came up with was this: if I used my old address to send out a mass mail asking people to write to the new address, I could reply back to them from it and therefore save their addresses.

I suspect this was not the most logical or efficient way to do it. But whatever. It was all I could think of. I’m having a busy week, people.

What amazed me, though, was the sheer number of people who just did not get this. A lot did, so I’m fairly sure I made sense. But a good handful of people wrote back to the old email address, doing me a whole heck of no good. However, they will remain nameless because they’re my family and friends and I love them even if they JUST DON’T F’ING LISTEN.