The email addresses we wish we had never created

Perhaps using sexy_babe wasn’t the best choice for your first email address. We all make mistakes, but this could have been very costly.

This tween is all of us. Don’t agree? What was your first email address. Yeah, thought so.

Hello again, friends. Let me premise this story with some warm reasurrance for you all: We are human, and we all make mistakes.

That’s right, I’m here to take you into the not-so-distant past of your youth.

A time when our pants were baggy, our singlets were tight, and our teachers confiscated our Pokemon trading cards so we swapped Tazos just to get by.

Me? Well, I was just like you, of course.

I enjoyed wearing long, velcro board shorts from Best&Less, listening to Evanescence and wearing my hair so tight I resembled Benjamin Button.

Sometimes, I even indulged in a butterfly clip or a slick of glitter eye shadow, when I wasn’t sporting my speed dealer sunnies.

I guess I was always destined to be a technology reporter …

Aside from my fashion forward life choices, this was also a time when the internet suddenly *appeared* and my pals and I wanted a slice of it.

But in order for us to unlock the secrets of the World Wide Web, we had to make our very first:

*~*eMaIL_aCcOuNt*~*

Hotmail launched it’s “high tech” webmail service in 1996 before other platforms like Yahoo, AOL and BigPond followed suit.

We soon learned that we needed a personal address to access cool things like MSN Messenger, MySpace and all those super safe online chat rooms we were about to frequent.

The algorithm for an early ’00s tween email address was pretty straightforward: Jam in the most symbols, underscores, numbers and sexual innuendo possible to boost your street cred.

Misspelling words that end in ‘s’ with a ‘z’ was in vogue, as was the always-hilarious “69” addition.

Soon, everyone had their own email addresses and would flash them around like a fancy police badge at school.

“Hey, Alice, what’s your email address?”

“[e-mail], what’s yours?”

“Mine’s [e-mail], I’ll MSN you after school today.”

Cool.

Oh, Michael. What were you thinking, son?

The email address that took my breathe away belonged to a girl in my grade, Joan.

Joan was a total classroom catch: Smart, funny, cool. I always saw her with her socks pulled up high and ribbons in her hair. While that sort of straitlaced behaviour would usually warrant a good slap, the swagger with which Joan donned her apparel earned her a great deal of respect around the corridors.

But my admiration for Joan soon grew when I came across her email address: [e-mail].

I mean, could you get any more clever? The word play was on point and there wasn’t a shred of surfin_gurl67, josie_rockstar or boyteaser94 in sight.

There wasn’t a ‘hot male’ anywhere around our all girls school, but a girl can dream, can’t she?

Friends, I was not a “Joan”.

My first email address was [e-mail].

I chose this because it was my favourite snack, and 58 came from five letters in my first name and the fact that 8 was my favourite number.

Unfortunately, my super cool style didn’t seem to sit well with prospective employers.

Or, for that matter, elderly relatives I wrote condolence messages to following a family death.

Now, as I approach my thirties, I look back on this email and cringe — hard.

To make myself better, I asked my colleagues and friends what their first emails were.

Let’s enjoy these together:

Age: 11

Email: [e-mail]

This was my brother’s email. He only recently stopped using it but it remained his username in video games.

Age: 13

Email: [e-mail]

Wogboy had just come out, so this is both topical AND racist!

Age: 12

Email: [e-mail]

I guess I thought if I gave out this email to my friends, we’d obviously be friends forever.

A 'friends forever' email doesn't bring you friends, ever.

Age: 12

Email: [e-mail]

I loved after school drama classes and also Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi which inspired the K8.

Age: 13

Email: [e-mail]

Why didn’t you get that job at Woolies, sweetheart? You were a shoe in!

Age: 14

Email: [e-mail]

I made it in Year 9 because I was excited about meeting a squirrel on my school trip to Germany the next year. I thought it was funny. I imagined it like a waiter coming out with a squirrel dish in a restaurant yelling WHO ORDERED SQUIRREL?

Many questions remain unanswered: Did you ever meet a squirrel? And who ordered said squirrel?

Age: 16

Email: [e-mail]

I’m Greek and a chick. The only number available was 42. I want to slap myself in the face.

I went for a job trial and they refused to call me by my name, only by “Greek chick”. So embarrassing.

Age: 13

Email: [e-mail]

This email address is no longer active as the owner was incarcerated in 2003.

Age: 14 (old enough to know better)

Email: [e-mail]

My favourite Spice Girl was Scary Spice (Mel B) and I got my first email address during that brief period in 1998 when she married her backup dancer Jimmy Gulzar and changed her name to Mel G. Hence I was a Mel G man.

A true fan. The fact checking here is unparalleled, Mel B would appreciate it.

Age: 14

Email: [e-mail]

Unsurprisingly, based on that, it would prove to be a long, long time before I actually partook in the 69 position.

Age: 13

Email: [e-mail]

Get it, girl.

Age: 15

Email: [e-mail]

I was in love with Chad Michael Murray. Although creative, this email did nothing for my dating/high school dance hook up life. If anything, it ruined it completely for the following reasons:

1. It was bloody long and difficult to yell out over the blaring music at school dances

2. I then had to explain that the “love” was spelt “luv” and the “you” was spelt “u”.

3. People didn’t know if I was saying “chaddy” or “chatty”.

NB: A poor choice of email will ruin all hopes of finding your own Chaddy Boy in the future.

Age: 13

Email: [e-mail]

I was a diehard Lord of the Rings fan and this was a quote from the first movie. In Elfish it means “Don’t look back, Arwen.” I only ditched it when I finally signed up for Facebook at NINETEEN. I was like — I can’t commit to more years of this.

Age: 15

Email: [e-mail]

I was big into Powderfinger and this was a song title from the band. My mum laughed when she saw it. I wasn’t a cool kid.

Powerful choice. This one will never go out of fashion, just like Powderfinger themselves.

Age: 12

Email: [e-mail]

I once used my cousin’s email address to apply for a job instead of creating my own.

And didn’t realise what the actual address was until after sending the application. Never got a response.

Age: 11

Email: [e-mail].

I have no idea what I was thinking as a year 5 student when I made it. I’m sure it wasn’t looked too kindly on. I got some very strange looks when I gave it out. I had meant to make it warmsherry, but misspelled it.

There is a lot that's wrong with this. For starters, what 11-year-old needs a piping hot glass of sherry to take the edge off?

Age: 10

Email: guano1986@hotmail

I was a huge Ace Ventura Pet Detective fan.

What a ‘film buff’, [e-mail]

But not everyone shares the same dark past as we do, friends.

Some of you, it seems, came out of the womb with a resume, freshly typed and formatted, wrapped neatly around your umbilical cord:

Age: 9

Email: [e-mail]

I think you had to have an email for like commonwealth bank dollarmites

so I picked that one.

When you pick your first email just to get yourself a Dollarmite account, you know your surname must be ‘Smith’.

Age: 12

Email: [e-mail]

My Dad set it up for me. Turned out to be a good move as I still use it today. I was super embarrassed about it when I was 12 though. I wanted a sexy princess email.

Age: 12

Email: [e-mail]

I still have the same email I created in primary school too — It was too sensible, which is embarrassing because it means I still use Hotmail.

It takes all kinds.