General Question

iRemy_y's avatar

Why is email so creepy?

Asked by iRemy_y (550points) January 1st, 2010

Why is it that, when talking to people, they will be completely OK with giving you there Facebook, AIM, Skype, MSN etc. and giving you there picture and all there personnel info on it, but when you ask to email a picture it seems creepy? I even felt a bit weird asking for an email. So why is something like Facebook, which gives more personnel info, less creepy than email?

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10 Answers

pjanaway's avatar

Emails are likely to get spammed, people are more warey of them.

Either way using email to talk to people is so 1990s.. lol

eeveegurl's avatar

I think that it’s much easier to disable a Facebook account, to limit the privacy settings, or to defriend/unfriend someone and the whole shebang, than it is to disable an email account and get a new one.

janbb's avatar

Not sure if I would call it creepy, but I do think giving someone your e-mail address seems more of a personal connection as opposed to a general social networking site.

PandoraBoxx's avatar

I agree with @janbb. Creepy is not the correct word, perhaps “intrusive.” eMail is much more personal, although I’m more guarded of my cell phone number, and have several e-mail accounts.

I would find someone I don’t know e-mailing me a picture to be rather weird. If it was someone I just met, I would expect to be directed to a flickr account.

DeanV's avatar

You do need an email account to sign up for facebook, but you don’t by any means need facebook to sign up for other things. I think an email address is more of a universal online identity, and on a different level than Facebook or Twitter or other sites, and that makes people hesitant to give it out.

Haleth's avatar

Facebook is a more non-committal way of talking with someone. You can add them as a friend and then leave them a one sentence comment and there’s no need to take it further. On e-mail, you have to actually have something to say, and you’re in a one-on-one conversation. E-mail works better between close friends than people who have already met each other, I think.

iRemy_y's avatar

@dverhey yeah but if they give me there facebook, they are also giving me their emails, usually found in the info.

@PandoraBoxx most people have their cell phone numbers on their facebook accounts. and having multiple emails is normal. its much more common to have 2 or 3 emails then it is to have facebook accounts.

to everyone else who says its a pain to stop talking to someone through email, thats what the “mark as spam” button is for. You wont see their mail, and they’ll stop trying after a while.

PandoraBoxx's avatar

@iRemy_y, I don’t have either my cell phone or e-mail address listed on my Facebook account. Neither do my daughters, or most of their friends. Most have their privacy settings restricted to only their friends being able to see them, and if you search them, you cannot se their friends. You have to be asked in.

Polly_Math's avatar

Creepiness is in the eye of the beholder.

iRemy_y's avatar

@PandoraBoxx thats why i said most. kids who dont have their parents to moniter them dont care. most of my friends go as far as to have their adress up on it. and the normal settings are that only friends can see it. but slot of people i meet on other sites first offer to give their facebook.

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