Once long ago in a land far far away emails didn’t exist.
It was called the 90s.
And it was amazing.
I know you don’t believe this but when I was in high school no one emailed. BECAUSE EMAIL DIDN’T EXIST.
Oh my god, how old are you?
Math’s not really your strong suit is it?
How did you, like, text your friends?
Seriously, email didn’t exist, text messaging was years away.
How did you, like, talk to each other?
We used the fucking telephone. And when someone wasn’t home we left messages on answering machines or told our friends’ parents to leave a note taped up somewhere in the kitchen where they’d see it.
See, here’s me in high school. The only thing missing from that sweet fucking outfit is a sweet fucking pager.
Cause this look is nothing but sexy as shit:
Trust me when I say that guy had to fight off the ladies. He’s an IN DEMAND guy. I mean look at the pager he has RIGHT THERE ON HIS BRAIDED BELT.
In the early days of emails, getting them was kind of fun. It meant a friend was sending you something or keeping in touch. Now, though, every time I get an email or someone so much as mutters “I’ll email you” I sigh and think “don’t bother, just don’t bother” because it means one of a few things, or some combination thereof:
- I have to do something for someone (i.e.: work).
- I’m in some sort of trouble.
- A bill is due (probably for my pager).
- Spam (either from one of my many Nigerian prince friends or porn or both).
- I’ve been CC’d reply all on some shit that doesn’t even involve me and that even those involved don’t give a fuck about.
- Don’t even get me started on that BCC bullshit. That’s just talking shit or gossip and you know it.
Enter: my solution. The Return of the Fax Machine.
Let’s be honest, sending a facsimile is a superior form of communication: it’s slow, it’s tedious, half the time it doesn’t work but you gained at least 12 minutes of nail-filing time while listening to the machine dial and redial a number that turned out to actually be a telephone number. Rather than a subject line, I want a full cover sheet telling me exactly how many pages will be transmitted my way over the course of the next 75 minutes.
Meanwhile, I’ll be down the hall grabbing another cup of coffee. And when someone asks what I’m doing I’ll state the simple, important truth:
WAITING FOR A FAX.
Faxing brings up an interesting point: what about all the faxes that never went through? There must be some place in the world — a place that existed far before the World Wide Web or Cyberspace — where untransmitted fax after untransmitted fax after untransmitted fax still live piled on top of one another. That compilation equals a lot of communication that was never received. Did anyone miss any of that information? Did the world ever end because the fax machine didn’t have enough paper in it? No, it was just a decent excuse to keep that shit to a minimum.
So, for the sake of your own sanity and everyone else’s I encourage you to keep this fax mentality in mind next time you are tempted to reply all. Cause at some point everyone’s fax machine runs out of paper and then one day they just stop filling it all together.
