I’ve gotten several questions about the statement of gmail hate in my profile. If you’re reading my profile, you might be reading this as well, so I will explain my adversion to gmail once and for all.

To those who may have been away from the tech savvy world for the past year or so, Gmail is the relatively new email service offered by Google. It was considered the cream of the crop of email services when it was first introduced. The main draw of Gmail was its exclusivity: one cannot simply sign up for a gmail account; one must be INVITED to have a gmail account. This marketing strategy by Gmail was probably the best thing they could have done for it. It is considered cool to have a gmail account. Someone, somewhere thought I was worthy enough to be invited into the inner circle. And thus was the start of the gmail country club.

From this country club rose my hate for gmail. I started seeing it pop up everywhere, but especially in AIM profiles. People I knew whose main email address is a school address (be it virginia.edu, clemson.edu, or mit.edu account) or any other address started listing their gmail accounts as their “contact email.” Now I ask, why do you feel that this is necessary?

It seemed to me that folks were doing it just to make the statement “look! I, too, am important enough for someone, somewhere, to invite me to join the exclusive gmail country club” while the same folks continued to predominantly communicate with their old, less pretentious, public library-level email accounts.

Maybe it’s just my innate aversion to the whole idea of jumping on a bandwagon, the gmail country club bandwagon included. I just wish that people would put contact information in their AIM profiles that are their REAL contacts, the main email account that they use, and not one they want to show off to others. So I suppose in the end, my hate is not for gmail itself, but for the way that users have made a fashion trend statement out of it.