This evening I signed up for a new trial account with an old email service provider of mine, MailSnare, for the purpose of having an email account that I can use with my personal website once its redesign is complete. After doing so I realized how many email addresses I actually have. I have 2 or so real addresses locally (on my server), 2 at Gmail and now 1 at MailSnare (temporary for now though). Does a person truely need so many email addresses? I seem to be able to find justification for each account, but can I really? All email accounts are essentially the same in functionality, and I definately have enough capacity to serve all of my needs on 1 account…. so whats up with this? My latest aquisition is justified as being clear of most SPAM, so it can be used publicly without much hassle. The other 4 could truely and logicly be 1 account…. probably a single Gmail account. I could sort the different classifications or whatever and from what i’ve heard, it also is low-SPAM. I seem to feel attached to each and every email address I have, so convinving myself that I only need 1 account is a loss, but this is still something that bothers me. If email is such an advanced commucation form, then why can we not consolidate to 1 and have our lives totally together on that address? As an electronic identity method email isn’t very analogous to the real world.
Do we really need a spare address for every possible presenting self?
john@bussiness.com
john@church.org
john@porno.us
john@poker.net
john@personal.info
it really is excessive…. but we do it… all for our own various reasons