You might believe that you're winning at the game of email, writes Eric Thomas, but there are always more messages to answer. (Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)
As I watched her in the seat next to me on the plane, I could tell that she was a pro. Her finger darted across the screen from right to left at a pace both impressive and frantic. Clearly, she had been on the app for years.
Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe.
A quick pause to evaluate. I noticed her unblinking eyes and shallow breathing. Was she holding her breath in concentration?
And then again: Swipe.
She was fastened to the screen with her full attention. The flight attendant could have asked her if she wanted to fly the plane, and I don’t think she would have looked up.
With the airplane door about to close, she knew time was running out. She would have to stop as soon as her data connection failed. That made her focus even more urgent. Five more to go. Three more to go.
Swipe. Swipe.
Would she win?
Yet, as the airplane door sealed shut, she knew her time was up. She could not win — not that day, and perhaps not for decades. Because she was playing the unwinnable game of email.
In the game of email, there is no way to win.
For many of us, email is equal parts professional obligation and round-the-clock computer game. It demands our full attention, making us resent it even more.
Please don’t tell me about your perfect email “system.” The brutal efficiency that you show by pouncing on messages as soon as they bloop into your inbox. The regime of color-coded flags that you impose on the messages you receive. The proud and puritanical discipline of having an empty inbox each day at 5 p.m. Bragging about your bespoke email game theory doesn’t hide the truth.
Email is a drag.
Here’s how we know email is soul-crushing, occupational torture. When was the last time you heard someone gush about the app that they use for email? Reply: Never.
Meanwhile, millions of people cherish Microsoft Excel — a database app! — to the point of hosting tournaments that showcase their spreadsheet formulas and buying novelty T-shirts reading, “Freak in the Sheets.” (It’s an Excel -lent joke, they would say.)
People in visual arts attend conventions for their apps and party together. People lose their minds when Apple releases a new product. Artificial intelligence is drawing billions in venture capital.
But, email … meh.
The most fulfilled that I feel when working with my email is when my inbox is empty — the glorious state that I have coined, “Inbox-ification.” Your mail app is open, but all that is staring back at you is glorious empty space. Nothing to click on. No attachments to wrestle. And no reply-all needed. Spoiler alert: “Inbox-ification” never happens.
That’s how lame email is. The app is best when it is empty. We wouldn’t say that about a piece of writing software or a photography app or a social media program. Those apps are best when they are full, active and crackling. But I only love my email when it is a silent empty vessel.
In those moments of “Inbox-ification,” I get visibly angry about receiving an email. Like a leaf floating onto a freshly raked lawn, that one impertinent email sullies the two hours of banging on the keyboard with my face two inches from the screen.
Or, maybe to you, the email appearing on your screen is like an evil space invader swooping in. If you are going to win, you must obliterate that enemy. At moments like these, we treat email as a game, just like our friend was “playing” on the plane. To delete is to simply and easily vanquish the enemy. To open an email is to bravely level up. To forward is to ask your teammate to deal with it (Thanks, Janet!).
The most sophisticated modern video game joystick is the keyboard. It’s true for email, along with all kinds of fantasy and sports games: The keyboard is king. Those fun video games, which send you to mystic lands with imaginary beasts, have cheat codes and elaborate keyboard flourishes. The same is true for dreary email: The other day I found a shortcut for sending an email. When I mash those keys in unison to send an email, it’s a little visceral victory. Command-Return, baby!
Email too has its mobile versions, just like fantasy and sports video games. However, while traditional video games allow you to fight warlocks while waiting for the bus, email catapults our often-bland work lives into every unoccupied minute. How exciting to read the agenda for the third quarter purchasing meeting on a sunny day at the bus stop!
Kids know that email is horrid. High school and college students are notoriously repulsed by email. Ask any teacher or professor. Emailing students is like leaving a note outside your child’s bedroom door, only to hear them step right over it. No matter how urgent the subject line and especially if you tell them about its importance, they can muster a way to ignore it as they eagerly Snapchat with their new friends.
Why would kids be excited to check their email? We explain to them how our inboxes are a swirl of unapologetic spam, unpaid bills, wordy announcements and unfinished tasks. Kids have heard us whine about this sour brew for years.
My generation didn’t hear much of that from our parents — because our parents didn’t have email. Like many forty-somethings, I was the first person in my family to get an email account when I arrived at college. My email address was more hieroglyphic than anything: c674141@showme.missouri.edu. Very catchy.
(With this timing, my generation will likely spend five, six or seven decades on professional email. That is not a kind sentence. Please do not re-read it.)
As I logged in to my account during freshman year, a nuclear-green screen glowed back at me, hoping that a high school friend might have sent a thoughtful note or replied to my email from the day before. Even in those frontier days of email, the annoyances and spam were there. “Forward this message onto 47 of your closest friends and receive eternal happiness.”
I should have seen the true nature of email then and there.
But even if I had, what would I have done? Nearly every job in 2024 involves firing off a few dozen emails each day and reading many more. We reflexively sit down each morning to sling messages — whether dull or profound — to one another.
Once they reach someone else’s inbox, it’s their problem.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .
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