Internet Etiquette

If it hadn’t been for several cases of poor Internet etiquette, I would probably have never met Jerry or ended up living in Alaska.

Seriously. Sometimes it’s the little things. Do you remember the early days of email chat? How many times over those early years did you roll your eyes and bemoan the “lack of etiquette” that left a long string of un-deleted previous emails, including other people’s personal email addresses, trailing along at the bottom of a post sent to you?

Most of us learned, eventually, that it was considered polite [on the forums, at least, since many of us were on dial-up connections back then] to delete all those email addresses and excess lines of text and only forward what was pertinent.

My “Celestial Dance” blog post, with the story that had brought Frosty into my life, brought so many good memories flooding back with it. It’s hard to believe it was twenty-four years ago.

One of the memories that gave me a fresh chuckle was remembering how I was able to scroll down, below Frosty’s well-written and intriguing story, past a couple of “You should read this” and “I just had to share this with you” emails from total strangers … to where it actually showed the original poster listed as (if I remember right) frosty@customCPU.com.

Even though I was still pretty new to the Internet in 1997, it wasn’t hard to figure out that frosty@customCPU.com was most likely the writer of the story I’d so enjoyed over my morning coffee.

“Hmm”, I remember thinking, all those years ago. It sure was a well-told tale. As I enjoyed writing myself, I fully appreciated a story that could lift you up and drop you right in the middle of the action.

Did I dare? All I had to do was hit “Reply All” and then delete every email address except the one. Biting my lower lip, I started typing.

It was a really short email … I had no experience chatting with people I didn’t know, and wasn’t even sure a correspondence would be welcome – but I wanted to let this “Frosty” person how much I enjoyed his story. I mean, really, what could it hurt?

I’m pretty sure it went something like this:

Hi Frosty,

Your wonderful story, “Celestial Dance”, popped up on my goat-owner’s list this morning. I just wanted to send you a quick note to let you know how much I enjoyed it.

Snowgoose

And I clicked “Send”. Amazing, isn’t it, how such a small thing can change the entire direction of your life?

Oh yes … of course there’s more. 😉