Do you remember the internet? What was all that about?
I don't mean the useful communication service integrally entangled with myriad aspects of our professional and private lives, that indispensable utility you take for granted until you live in a country that enforces a mandatory blackout hour daily because the monopoly electricity provider is typically inept.
I mean the internet, that fun commodity that you persuaded your parents to hook up to your clucking Windows 95 desktop after being awed by its clueless promotion in such Hollywood blockbusters as The Net and Children's BBC's The Web (I remember something about Zoe Ball running from a big spider, probably some kind of metaphor for sex predators).
The internet you were so impatient to use as your mum's boyfriend slowly connected the modem and explained in tedious detail how to use Internet Explorer 1 or whatever, but when you finally got your freedom to surf the information superhighway with the world's knowledge at your fingertips you didn't really know what to do, so just downloaded some blurry League of Gentlemen wallpapers and joined the first small forum or Yahoo! Group you came across dedicated to your favourite TV show or band which you doggedly stuck with for a year. You know, that internet.
Like other impulsive decisions you made and attitudes you embraced in your teenage years, those early email addresses could go on to spoil your whole life.
The early years: Impractically long comedy fanboy quotes (1999-2004)
True to the hermetically sealed nature of my various life cycles (school; university; Edinburgh; travelling; whatever exactly I'm doing now... writing this?), I've updated my email addresses every few years. So I've never been in one of those situations that inevitably happens, when a prospective employee is asked to include an email address on their application, and not thinking to sign up with a new, professional-sounding one they embarrassingly disclose the personal email they've been using since they were 15, which doesn't make the best impression. 'mr_poonani_monster@hotmail.com' or whatever. I hope that happens.
The closest I came to this was signing up for my first proper bank account at 15 or 16, being confronted with an email address box for the first time in my life and dutifully transcribing 'thisyeargarthfinallygotpubes@hotmail.' (None of these email addresses will work any more, at least I hope not). My friend's attractive older sister worked at the bank, and he later told me she'd found it amusing. 'Brilliant, one step closer to the hopelessly unlikely friend's attractive older sister poonani,' I probably tried to kid myself.
My second email address (third if you count the communal 'warburton50.freeserve' one) was with Yahoo!, probably because I wanted to join a group or something, and evidently not having taken any lessons away from the laughing derision or ungainly length of my Wayne's World 2 inspired original, I went for the Red Dwarf-inspired 'gunmenoftheapocalypse@yahoo.' I used that alias on a few forums that somehow seemed worth wasting my precious youth on, and when I contacted Richard Herring in 2004 applying for the position of virgin he was advertising (buy the DVD for explanation), one of several reasons he cited for turning me down was that my email address looked a little worrying.
Did I learn my lesson? Did I smeg.
University: It's all about music (2004-2007)
Like a pathetic character from Grease caught up in a subculture apartheid or just another lost soul lacking a sense of self-worth in the real world, I defined myself by the music I listened to when I got to university and found it was a good way to meet people who were at least like-minded on that one aspect of life, which was one step above most of the people from my block I'd been hanging out with in the early weeks at least.
I was delighted to receive the first nickname in years that wasn't Harry Potter based, when someone noticed I tended to wear the same band T-shirt quite a lot and named me 'Iced Earth Guy,' and that would do for my email address with my new friends and my alias on our cliquey rock society forum.
As time went on, an insufficient student loan and lack of a proper job led me back to my teenage penny-scrounging pastime of writing consumer reviews online to make 'a living' at 50p a time (don't worry about me, I was making a small profit flogging illegal imported DVDs too), for which I returned to comedy fanboy quotes territory with the Lee-and-Herring-derived moniker Frankingsteins, which has regrettably stuck and is still used today when I embark on uncharacteristic online socialising (basically just a travel tips forum). I think I messed up my original frankingstein@hotmail email address, so frankingstein2@hotmail stuck for a couple of years. Until I replaced all my friends again.
A viewing of the landmark Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors with my Edinburgh pals offered another nickname I could grasp onto for email purposes. Some of my Edinburgh friends still occasionally ask if I use 'thewizardmaster@hotmail' any more, and the ones who don't might have tried to contact me using it and just didn't know what to do when they got the bounce-back. If you didn't get the memo, maybe that's your reply.
Work: Let's get professional and boring (2007-)
At least you don't need email when you're dead. Hurry up, I'm waiting
When the end of university was looming and the prospect of real work looked dismally bleak, I signed up for a few work-from-home scams, lost money and learned life lessons (like I've never been foolishly trusting with money since). For this I had to come up with an email address that was suitably bland and professional for the first time, which was new territory for me.
Not being able to turn to cheesy 80s horror films, early 90s comedy movies, space sitcoms or power metal bands for inspiration, I just used the alias I'd been given by Lancaster University's amusingly outdated WING email service, taking part of my surname and my first initial. I won't type that one here, since Gmail's been good to me over the past seven years and I don't really want it screwing up.
If you know me and you ever wondered why my email address is that (it wasn't that difficult to work out), there's the fascinating origin story. Don't blame me, you clicked on a blog that promised to be absolutely pointless. You chose to waste your time.
When that email address was hijacked by spam a couple of years ago, I realised it was a bit reckless to only have the one, and signed up for a Yahoo! one just because I was too lazy to do the research and find out what sort of email services people are using now it isn't 2001 any more. I just used a boring variant of my name again, but closed it after a while when my perfunctory weekly checks only involved clearing out a full bin of spam. If you can tell me a reliable, non-spammy email service that doesn't want to take over my browser or demand I have a mobile phone (how many times can I fob off that Gmail request?), I'd be grateful.
There, that was more interesting than photos of some beach or temples wasn't it? What has my life become?
Sigh. Alright then, what are your embarrassing old email addresses? Let's all share our amusing stories in the comments below! Like I care about your life.
Next week: The history of my passwords, past and present!
