Shocked and bemused by e-introduction

Hello, nice to n-meet you. The phrase may seem strange but I’d like you to hold that thought. Last week I was e-introduced to someone for the first, official, time. This is where someone introduces you over email to someone else, by copying them in.

I found this hilarious but what followed really took the biscuit. “Hi Ed, nice to e-meet you!”

At first I wasn’t sure what to think – I was amused, shocked, even a little appalled.

‘How have we got to this point?’ I wondered, as a cynical friend text me suggesting an inappropriate response to the email chain.

This made me chuckle so to let him know I replied ‘hahaha’ – an e-laugh.

After the initial, hour-long, period of bemusement I started to look at the greeting from a different perspective.

In 2017, in every aspect of life, I spend a lot more time meeting and speaking to people online than in reality.

Like it or not, most of us do – and it’s not going to change.

I’d love to see proper statistics on it but I’d hazard a guess that of the dozens of people that email me every day I’ll probably only actually meet about 5%.

So why not have a different phrase for the 95% of online-only relationships I embark on?

I think e-introductions might be the way forward – specifying between actual interactions and electronic ones is important, because human contact is becoming increasingly infrequent.

While my hilarious ‘nice to n-meet you’ gag about meeting those of you who are reading this through a newspaper will hopefully never be anything other than a bad joke, e-introductions are my discovery of the year.