Got a problem on the Internet? The Internet Guy tells you what it is. With two novels he can’t sell, a screenplay he’d like to show you, and some “sinister monkey” art that would look great over your sofa, Rick Polito dishes advice with a big spoon.
Dear Internet Guy:
I saw that Yahoo is suing Facebook and I’m thinking “huh?” and then my friend says “Yahoo’s the Internet for old people” and I’m afraid to tell him I have a Yahoo email address.
What do I do?
–Slow on the Upload
Dear Slow,
The Internet is like hamsters, wolf spiders, the GOP, and any other species that eats their young. The landscape doesn’t so much shift as lurch. Today’s Facebook is what Myspace was in the early ‘oughts. Except Myspace may be coming back. Or maybe it’s not. Or maybe you won’t care because you’ll be distracted by some other twirling icon. You may be tweeting now, but you’ll be Pinterested in something else before the year is out.
Have you uttered the phrase “information superhighway” in the last decade? If so, you should be looking for an exit ramp and somebody to chew your food for you. You’re nowhere near that. A Yahoo email account is a middle-ground embarrassment, at best. It’s not like you’re rocking an AOL address—the Internet equivalent of an AARP card, a floral housecoat, and a dozen cats.
You could go to a Gmail account and that would probably be good enough for something like forever. Google steps in its own shit all the time and keeps marching. You could buy your own name as a domain on GoDaddy but you might as well get douchebag.ego.
It might be possible to keep up with “what’s cool” on the Internet but it’ll be out of date before you finish typing the URL. All those people striving to be the Mayor of the local Starbucks on Foursquare last year already look like the Jonas Brothers wearing bell bottoms on their FarmVille spread.
So keep your Yahoo address. At some point it might have retro cachet and even if it doesn’t, at least you won’t have to move over your contact list with all those lame people who weren’t cool enough to surf Google Wave with you.
Photo by Kibbe Museum
