Sunday, 14th January, 2007

How (And How Not) To Write An Email, And Get A Reply From A Tranny

rant tranny email

This is going to sound horrendously pompous of me, and I wouldn't write it if I hadn't been continually worn down over the years by frustrating examples of the sort of emails that I know we all get.

I do, to tell the truth, get rather a lot of emails each day. Perhaps not as many as I'd like, but enough to keep my little postage-stamp icon in my dock with an almost perpetual red star in its top right-hand corner.

Some of these emails are administrative — Erin (for example) emails me to let me know certain things have happened: someone's left a comment; someone (ie. me) has uploaded a video/photo, and she gives me the code to use; a cron job has gone bad and wiped my hard disk — you know, stuff like that.

Some of these emails are the general ephemeral crud of mailing lists — each one prompting me to question just why I signed up in the first place, with my mouse hovering over the 'unsubscribe' link.

Some of them are about work, although (and this is very naughty) I have a couple of rules that scurry those away in folders and mark them as 'read' so I can read them when I'm good-and-ready, and not turn into a consistent working-machine.

Some of them (and these are the ones I love) are continued conversations with friends, accquaintances and cohorts — a general back-chatter that accompanies the more 'visual' aspects of my online activities.

...

Actually, just side-stepping for a sec, it occured to me last night that the things that appear on blogs are like little bubbles on the surface of a greater swamp of online-communication. Behind the scenes there's a perpetual 'twittering' (pun intended) of gossip, comment, discussion, and back-slapping going on. Most of the things that take form as 'posts' have their origins in some other form of communication, and sometimes the resulting 'NSFB¹' conversations, gossip, and "WTF?!"s they generate would be fascinating if they seeped into the public realm.

...

Sorry emails...

Like I said, I do love those. I think that perhaps the nature of the 'core' of what I write about means that sometimes people are — perhaps — a little intimidated to press the "Post" button. It's not everyone's cup of tea to attach their name, avatar and link to a bunch of text that centres around a somewhat 'unconventional' subject — even if it rings (unconnected) bells.

It's nice to know that somewhere, someone read something, and was touched by it — even if it's through a private channel rather than a pinky-purple speech-bubble.

Some emails make me inwardly despair, and call for a "RTFB!²" reaction — which (as was pointed out to me last night as I ranted about this in the pub) is perhaps a little intolerant impatient of me. And even though it's true that I have put a lot of time and effort — and invested a good chunk of my life — into trying to be as open as possible about myself, and the words "Tell me about yourself" do — perhaps — exasserbate me somewhat, I should perhaps take that as a sign that someone is interested rather than lazy

And then there are the 'chat-up' emails...

Being — as I am — a moderately attractive sort of individual, whose general 'expression of self' seems to fall into line with the tastes of a fair few onlookers, and being — as I am — somewhat prone to whoring certain pictures of myself in all manner of online 'venues', I do occasionally get 'come-on' emails.

Now, I'm not (as you probably know) averse to 'come-on' emails. In fact, I usually sit here squeeing with delight at the thought that "OMG, someone fancies me!" — which (start the violins) for someone who spent much of their adolescent life convinced they were pig-ugly, is quite a confidence boost.

I'm not averse to them at all — but what fascinates (and sometimes irritates) me, is the language-based diversity of these emails. They range from the carefully-penned, thoughtful, flattering emails, to the one liners...

...you know — "ur hot".

We all get these, I'm sure. And doesn't it just bewilder us why we get them?

One of the things I've learned over time spent online, is that for every profile in whatever forum, there's a real person sat at the other end of it. It doesn't matter whether it's a text-based chatroom, an email in an inbox, a bristling purple goblin in a MMPORG, or even a bot — at some point a real human being sat down at a keyboard and composed some form of communication.

And it fascinates me to try and picture the literary-compositional scenario that brings things like this into my inbox...

hi siobhan how ru, u look stunning get back

Call me a pedant if you like, and I completely understand that in some contexts that's a perfectly appropriate opener to a longer conversation, but *ahem*

Were it to appear on my phone, I might just consider texting back "thnx!", eschewing the luxury of predictive text, and assuming the 'language' of instant messaging. But it's not from a fiddly little 10-button keypad — it's from a computer, with a proper fucking keyboard, complete with a SHIFT key.

All emails like that make me want to do, is write back "u cock".

...

Now, on the whole, I don't really care much about this. And I presume that my reactions to emails like that are pretty much the same as everyone else's — we either ignore them, fume for a few minutes, or trash them.

But, like I said, the scenario that brought forth that poetry intrigues me — "What", I wonder to myself, "was the intent behind that? What was the desired outcome of such an introduction?"

"They want sex," said my friend in the pub last night "that's all."

Which is fair enough, I guess. But I wonder just how many times they're successful in their lower-case flirting. Does that approach actually work some times? Do they occasionally get "thnx hun, ur hot too lets fuck" in their inboxes, which starts off some kind of long-distance non-predictive mastubatory relationship?

If they do, then hurrah! — and what little advice I might have is completely irrelevant. But permit me the indulgance/arrogance of assuming that my reactions to these chat-up lines are in some way 'typical' of my peers, and let me offer a few pointers on how to send an email-based introduction to a transvestite such as myself with a much greater likelihood that she's going to write back...

Patience

I'm wondering if a lot of the problems that arise in my inbox come from a far-too-impatient approach — an ejaculatory reflex, if you like. Some communal contexts require a sense of 'urgency' about them — you've got five minutes until the club closes so you'd better act fast if you want to pull (for example). Or perhaps — as in the case of a chatroom — there's more of a 'conversational ettiquette' about the place. It's perhaps expected that communication is short and fluid.

But the time-shifting nature of emails means that it can be hours — even days — before what you wrote is read. So urgency isn't a problem.

Take your time, re-read what you wrote, and don't hit "Send!" until you're quite sure that you've said what you want to say.

Empathy

As I said, at the end of every profile there's a real person — not a programmatically-reflex-based bot. Chances are, somewhere within that profile are the clues that can make that person much more accessible — clues that can help you put yourself in the mind of that person, and help you pre-guess their reaction.

Does anything about them suggest that the kind of thing they're hoping for is a barrage of testosterone-fuelled, macho posturing with promises of a "huge cock"?

Don't assume you're what they're looking for. You'll only end up looking like a bit of a muppet.

I'm not (BTW) going to suggest that txt-speak is always wrong³ — but the style of writing in their profile should give a good idea as to its appropriateness. Is it a bunch of lowercased "omg!"s and "lol!"s? Then fine, tell them "ur hot". But is it obviously a carefully, agonised-over-time piece of personal expression?

Then at least use capital letters at the start of sentences, and some bloody punctuation.

Interestingness

(I love using that word )

The tiny character-limits of <textarea>s are never enough, however, to truly get to know someone. If there's a link to more information about them (like — I dunno — maybe a blog?) then have a read through a few pages to get to know them a little better.

Dammit, try Googling them as well.

With a greater understanding of what it is that makes them tick, and the things that interest them, there's more likeliness that you can include something that'll pique their curiosity and twitch their brain cells.

The chances are — especially if this is an attractive or new girl — that their inbox is probably stuffed with come-ons/introductions. By the time they get to yours, most likely they'll be (at best) bored, or (at worst) seriously pissed off with the one-liners, and if you grab their interest then you're onto a winner.

Interestingness is the key

Flattery

We are I am fickle, superficial, vain and easy to please, frankly. If you flatter me enough, it'll trigger that little frisson of excitement (in my pants) and make the likelihood of me contemplating sticking my tongue down your throat writing back much more of a real prospect.

But flattery isn't just telling someone "ur hot" — real flattery comes from knowing someone's taken a bit of their time to think about you. It comes from knowing that you've featured for more than fifteen seconds in one of their fantasies while they jerk off a quick message at their keyboard.

Real flattery comes from knowing that someone's managed to see through the two-dimensional crappily-reduced thumbnailed-representation of you, and connected in some way with the person underneath.

And, perhaps, after all, that sense of connection is the single most important thing. People ping each other online all the time — they send out conversational "SYN"s all over the place, but it's when they get an "ACK" back that that certain magic happens.

The problem comes (she said, continuing the Internet Protocol analogy — which perhaps is a bad one) when no-one bothers to read the RFC document on 'handshaking' — so the connection almost always gets dropped.

...

Again, I'm sorry if that all comes across as arrogant, preachy, or self-obsessively patronising — and maybe yeah, if you/I throw yourself/myself into certain spaces which you/I know cultivate one-line lower-case punctuation-free attempts at quickies, then you've/I've only got yourself/myself to blame.

But maybe my reasons for writing this aren't neccessarily to do with trying to improve the quality of flirting in my inbox — perhaps they're more to do with trying to explain why I don't always reply to emails that consist solely of questions like:

hi, are you interested in men?

"OK, (a) What part of "bisexual" is confusing you? (b) Only the interesting ones."

¹ NSFB: Not Safe For Blogging™

² RTFB: Read The Fucking Blog™

³ THE COROLLARY TO THIS, OF COURSE, IS THAT ALL-CAPS MESSAGES ARE SHOUTY AND THEREFORE ALWAYS WRONG

It took months of stalking Googling before I emailed you

...hold on a minute — you emailed me

Maybe they're afraid I'm actually a Spacefem-alike girl, armed with kerosene. Really, I'm not.

Oooh, but that sounds like fun

Maybe [...] they assume that trannies are never in a relationship but want to be, so they see it as an open court?

Maybe that's what niggles me about them — the non-realisation that I'm a human being with feelings, not just a sub-complex response-stick who'll take unconsidered and hasty txt-spews as flattery.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this (as usual), but there's something patronising about the one-liner, when it's combined with a demand for a response (as opposed to the snippet of praise that just makes you warm and bubbly inside) — something demeaning about it.

It often makes me wonder if they treat women the same

I still can't work out why you never replied to my email to you eighteen months ago

Ah. Um There is, of course, the slight problem that I'm crap sometimes at replying to emails, regardless of how well they're written. I've got a list of about fifteen big ones that I really need to get back to right now (for example).

I should change the title to "Potentially Get A Reply", perhaps.

I have thought about producing a "Bisexual Card", in the same way a vegetarian friend of mine has a "Fish Card" to explain what he does and doesn't eat.

You know, I think you could combine the two...

How Come We Can't Speak Monkey?

religion fundamentalism link

...and other bonkers twatspeak from self-righteous dickwads (Thanks Loz !)

Of course, my favourite is this one...

"Men should stick to blue and women should stick to pink. We dress babies in the right colors so why can't we do the same as adults? It is a sin to wear clothes that belongs to the opposite sex and women are particularly bad at violating this rule. Men don't wear dresses (apart from a few sickos) so why should females wear pants? It's a sin! Most women today are transvestites and abominations. [...]

So please dress like a man if you are a man and dress like a woman if you are woman and stop flaunting your satanic lifestyle and defiance of God. Thanks."

Glorious

I'm not a girl, I'm a sicko in a dress ... but it's a very nice (etc)

/me makes obligatory Professor Frink quote...

Pi is exactly three!