October
10Vexed @ Email
In the beginning, emails were supposed to be great timesavers, and in Hollywood, a town of mediocre communicators, emails were going to facilitate an improved give-and-take.OK, let's all admit it: Email has now become the root of all evil.
Consider the issues: For one thing, most people in a position of responsibility receive such a blizzard of emails that they don't read them anyway. Important (or self-important) individuals possess such a maze of email addresses that they forget which ones they should check.
Gossip blogs made a big deal over how Scarlett Johansson got Barack Obama’s private email address, until it was learned she just had access to his assistant's.
Most email addresses are, in fact, incorrect, and most emails go unread, but that has not discouraged an entire generation of assistants, agents and salesmen from relying on them. Young talent agents who should get in the face of producers and casting people instead take the lazy way out -- they make their pitches via email. These elicit zero response, but that doesn't stop them.
Advertising salesmen who should be making dozens of phone calls a day instead dispatch scores of emails. Their bosses go crazy because they know they have no impact.
The trouble is, it all seems too easy. If you want to email one party, it's tempting to copy ten or fifteen others (or even a hundred others) even though no one will read the damn thing.
And email addicts stupidly ignore the fact that emails never go away. How many secret romances, or dumb threats, have been discovered on hard drives by HR detectives, resulting in quick commands to "empty your desk and clear the premises."
The advent of the email has resulted in more missed meetings and botched lunch appointments because assistants confirm via email -- and don't get a reply.
So many channels of communication exist today, yet people are communicating more ineptly than ever. People have Facebook addresses, MySpace addresses, email addresses, texting addresses, Bluetooth addresses -- but, in the end, these are all distractions from that greatest of all forms of interaction: face time.
A face in the office, even a voice on the phone -- there's no other way to make a deal or sell an ad or stir excitement for an actor.
But tell that to a 25-year-old agent or sales rep and you get a look that can kill.
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