It’s not that I am a youngster shunning it for snapchat or tiktok etc., but I have come to realize that I basically stopped using email, other than as a (bad) 2fa solution and notification service (and the odd mailing list).

Even at work it has become basically a pure notification service for the internal platform and a place to send the odd document or request to a 3rd party…

I realize that I am probably living in a bubble in that regard, but I actually recently met people reasonably tech affine who claimed they don’t even have an email address?!

So for a while I have been thinking of just configuring an one-way email to XMPP forwarding service (with auto-response) and be done with email ;)

How do you feel about email? Is it still important for your daily communication?

Edit: So a few days later I guess the summary is:

  • Many people still use it for work / unversity (only);
  • Some people still really use it a lot, but mainly as a “since everything else sucks even more” option;
  • Quite a few (but probably still a minority) are like me and effectively stopped using email.
  • @nour
    6•3 years ago

    E-mail is my main means of one-on-one communication. For personal communications, only alternative that non-tech-affine people in this area use would be WhatsApp, which I don’t have and don’t want to get. I’m currently looking into alternatives to e-mail, but setting these up will take time, and it’ll be only with those few people who are willing to use an unfamiliar technology just to communicate with me… For paperwork I have to submit, e-mail is usually the expected way of submitting it unless you’re expected to go there and hand it in.

    I’m actually quite surprised to see a question like this come up. poVoq, if you’d like to tell, what do you use instead of e-mail?

    EDIT: Just saw mae’s comment. I also use e-mail to communicate with professors and the administration.

    • poVoqOP
      5•3 years ago

      I am long out of University, but yes I have heard that email is still common there. For work related stuff there is the odd email (on an company account) here and there, but to my distress most communication has moved to MS-Teams & WhatsApp (on a company phone).

      Privately I mostly use Threema/Telegram/Discord (forced to) and (by choice) XMPP/IRC with a bit of Matrix here and there if I can’t avoid it (but the latter seems mostly dead anyways). And I guess I could use Signal if I wanted.