So Santa gave you a new multimedia PC and an Internet account. Which means you'll probably spend the next week sending copies of your "HEY - WE'V FINALY GOT EMAILL!" missive to all and sundry.
You're not alone by any means. But watch out for the first signs of a very debilitating disease, one that can hit not just newcomers to the Internet's eco-sphere but old-timers alike.
Yes, we're talking about the dreaded Emailus Slobicus syndrome. It can be particularly widespread every year just after Christmas, and its "carriers" often aren't even aware that they've just been hit by it. So here, for their sakes, are a dozen of its main distinguishing marks.
1 After sending email - especially press releases - you get a burning desire to ring up each and every recipient and ask them if they've read it yet.
In advanced stages, you also use your wonderful new fax modem to send the same information.
2 Another initial symptom is the desire to type everything in capital letters, even though it's the cyberspace equivalent of SHOUTING. Senior managers are particularly prone to this.
3 You are unable to check the address you're writing to, and are unable to use the in-built spellchecker.
4 In email discussion "lists", you can't use the right address when sending a message to remove yourself (or "unsubscribe") from the list. This means the other 21,437 people on the list have to read your "UNSERSCRIBE ME PLEESE!" message.
5 What's the "CC:" function for? Yes, when you've been hit by Emailus Slobicus it makes you send copies of your message to people who aren't even remotely interested in what you're saying.
6 You can't send messages as ordinary email (ASCII or plain text) any more. No, you have to compress them or put them into special formats (as "uuencoded", "Binhexed" files or "attached documents"). This can be awkward if the recipient is using different email software; is a main way that "macro" viruses are spread; and assumes that everyone else on the planet has exactly the same set-up of hardware and software as you.
For example, newspapers' old mainframe systems make attached documents in email come across as gobbledegook - the guaranteed way not to get your email into the letters page. 7When you reply to a message and copy some of the original (to jog the sender's memory), Slobicus won't let you edit it down. Instead, it makes you quote all 70 or 80 lines again.
8 In severe cases, in an email discussion group you cannot hold your horses and spend time "lurking" - observing its rhythms, preoccupations etc - before firing off your first salvo. You're also unable to read any files called "Frequently asked questions" (FAQs), then you bog the group down with. . . your frequently asked questions.
9 Slobicus sufferers also use email in situations that really need that personal touch (e.g. staff performance assessments, that plea for a divorce).
10With email, shorter tends to be better. With Slobicus, the opposite is true.
11 The syndrome is often confused with Emailus Spammarus, where sufferers send the same unsolicited message (particularly chain letters and offers of a house to rent) to hundreds or thousands of newsgroups.
12 Finally both Slobicus and Spammarus cause a complete loss of common sense regarding other viruses and syndromes. Paralysed victims assume the world wants to hear about that latest computer virus they read about in the Fortean Times.
They cannot check out reliable Web sites first (e.g. http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov/virus). And they don't think twice before sending 40 or 50 people a copy of that Internet story they were given by a friend of a friend about the sick boy who wants postcards, or, yes, the strange case of the cookie recipe. Never heard it? Well, it goes like this. . .