Volume CXXXIII, Number 8 November 2, 2001 f

You've got mail: flirting over the internet
KARA OPPENHEIM
STAFF WRITER

From: guy@bowdoin.edu
To: girl@bowdoin.edu

hey too bad I didn't see you last nite. I ended up getting so wasted with andy and john and we watched gladiator and it was awesome. I am so stressed out now though cuz I did that instead of write gov journals. I think I'm gonna fail out. oh well. give me a call later or something and maybe we can hang out.

Bowdoin must not have realized what it was getting into when it incorporated email into the system. Administrators couldn't have known what time, energy, and stress would go into the composing and reading of these little kilobytes of silicon. Email is the number one method of procrastination hands down. But it serves a greater purpose than distraction-it can make or break a relationship. Length, frequency and content of emails between a guy and girl (or girl and girl, or guy and guy) can make all the difference in the world. They are complex and analyzed, forwarded and then over-analyzed. It is easy to tell who is writing one of those emails in the back of the Electronic Classroom with the screen turned towards the windows. But why do we stress so much? Why do we even bother when we could just call or even run into them? For some reason, though, email is the medium of choice for romantic exchange at Bowdoin. So, this week I set out to learn exactly HOW DOES EMAIL AFFECT RELATIONSHIPS.

From: girl@bowdoin.edu
To: guy@bowdoin.edu
Hi! I called your room to see what you were up to but I guess you had already left or whatever. anyway, yeah, last night was like ridiculous for me too-I don't even want to TELL you what I did because I am so embarrassed. it started with bowling and just went downhill from there…remind me to tell you in person, the story's too long to type anyway. So I think I heard that Harrison and Matt are having a keg or something tonight so I guess we'll just pregame here and then head over. but first I have to do some spanish. You should definitely stop by. Call me or whatever at like 8 or 9 or so. see you later.

One clear advantage of email over actual conversation is that email may be monitored and edited to ensure that the exact intended message is conveyed. Stuttering and spontaneous memory loss can be avoided. As can pestering, giggling friends. Even more important is the security in knowing that an email will actually be read whereas leaving messages with unreliable roommates is very risky. Moreover, an email is somehow a bit more casual that a phone call-conveying that you just thought to drop a note as you were checking your other mail, rather than having thought out and planned a phone call because you needed to talk to them right then. A more sinister (or pleasing, depending on your point of view) side of emailing is that all correspondence may be placed into the "saved" folder for future reference.

Email is very ambiguous-friends email, professors email, parents email-so receiving an email from someone of the opposite sex, while certainly some sort of step, may not necessarily indicate a step towards romance. (Research has shown, however, that Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning emails are not so innocuous as they may try to appear). Email often starts out as mundane, asking a classmate what the homework was, e.g., but the exchange may grow into a flirtatious or even romantic with time.

Beth is notorious among her friends for her email relationships. "Other people 'drunken-dial'," she says, "I drunken-email." Beth is a very social, outgoing person, but still manages to spend much of her time at a computer cultivating these relationships. She has them with many, many people of all sexes and ages. However, it always seems to end up that one correspondence begins to envelop her time and energy. Ultimately, she and her pen pal have to have a talk and determine what is happening between them. For although an email may not have the same face value as a phone call or date, six or seven notes a day (and not all of them just simple 'notes') is a commitment of thought and a labor of love. It seems that Beth and her email buddies may not have the guts to actually tell each other how they feel and so confine the relationship to a plethora of intense emails but nothing more-until virtual reality collides with Bowdoin reality.

Emails can be dangerous in their ambiguity when an intense email relationship is construed as harmless by some but not so by other parties. Amy was a freshman when Jamie, an upperclassman, began emailing her. They had hung out at parties and talked when they ran into each other during the day and so the start of the correspondence was pretty natural. But it progressed and soon they were quite intimate, so to say, at least on webmail.bowdoin.edu. What Amy did not know was that Jamie had a girlfriend at the time who was none too pleased to learn of these emails and pretty furious, actually, when she learned of their nature. Amy felt awful-she had no idea that her flirtatious, friendly notes were actually wrecking a relationship. Jamie did not understand why his girlfriend could claim he was cheating when all he was doing was typing. The girlfriend was not comfortable with the thought of her beloved writing three or four emails a day to another girl, understandably so. Who was right and who was wrong? Well the trouble seems to lie in the fact that emails can be very easily misinterpreted and so should be handled with extreme care.

So, what to conclude? Emails are, it seems, an easy way out. They can be used to gauge interest if someone is worried about making the first move. This is not particularly offensive, only it may become so if no further step is taken or if someone strings along many email buddies to decide which he or she prefers. The stasis email can induce is extraordinarily unsatisfying. They are more or less idiot-proof in that they can be edited, peer-edited, re-written and edited again before pressing "send." There is no romance in analyzing if "see you later" or "talk to you later" is a more appropriate sign-off, whereas a blurted out "I'll call you after dinner" is much more expressive and heart-felt. So email away, do not think I am deriding the Internet for purposes of emailing ones friends and family (not to mention professors). Only do not let use it as an excuse to avoid taking the plunge or to keep someone waiting. For one day he or she may stop emailing you because someone else actually DID something.