Are People Really As Stupid As NYT Break-Up Article Suggests?
You will probably have seen this "Styles" piece on the difficulties of breaking up in the digital era already. It is pretty much what you would expect: There's plenty to mock, plenty to feel smug about, just enough to evoke a small bit of pity, etc.; you'll all have your own favorite parts. Here's what surprised me.
Sharing passwords to e-mail accounts, bank accounts and photo-sharing sites is the new currency of intimacy….According to the Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center, one in five teenagers polled shares online passwords as a way to build trust and foster romance. Grown-ups, explained Lee Rainie, the project's director, are exhibiting similar behavior.
Is that real? Are grown-ups really doing that? I mean, kids I get. Kids are idiots. That's why sexting is such a fun story for everyone. But do modern-day adults really share their e-mail passwords with each other in a bid to boost trust? Man, I do not understand anything about how this new world works.
Sometimes I like to selectively read key words in a headline and then look at the accompanying picture.
And today I was all like, yes Jennifer Aniston = Stupid as melted vanilla. Who wants melted vanilla?
k sext me later ciao
Balk- is it ok if I clean out some these old contacts?
I don't even know who some of these people are?
It's just email.
My version of intimacy is leaving my gmail account signed in whilst my laptop sleeps at home. Of course, this is something of an empty gesture as my cpu is pw protected .. but it sure looks like openness when I just wake her up and reload after a long, hard day at the office.
Remember when farting around your partner was a sign of true intimacy? Now bro be wanting my pin number and shit?? Ugh.
that's funny, all of my passwords are "farting." Kills two birds with one stone.
Now you been maxing out my card
givin me bad credit, buyin gifts with my own ends
haven't paid the first bill
but you're steady heading to the mall
goin on shopping sprees
perpetrating to your friends like you be ballin.
Yes, don't all unmarried couples have joint bank accounts and share their email accounts? I also prefer my partner to be present when I'm taking a shit in the morning.
I prefer my partner to be present only when I'm shitting on her chest.
It's our thing.
I also was stunned and horrified by that bit. I mean, I understand in an abstract way the concept of "Let us build trust by sharing secrets" but how and why would that work on a practical level? Why would you *want* a shared email account? The story of the woman named "Kashmir" (because she was conceived to that song, maybe?) obsessively reading her old boyfriend's emails to his mother about why he didn't love her (Kashmir; I'm sure he loves his mother) anymore just staggered my mind.
"Kashmir" is a blogger, so she's not to be trusted anyway.
Who blogs about online privacy issues so it was just a bit too convenient she had a personal story that illustrated a times piece so perfectly.
some people i went to high school with have shared facebook accounts with their spouses. somehow that makes me barf even more than shared email accounts.
This is why I don't date Awl commenters. At least not until asked to.
Also, I share my passwords so I have someone to ask what they are.
That reminds me. I have an extra ticket for Unitard tomorrow night. Are any of you hot and rich?
Define "rich".
In your case, add "and homosexuelle".
Nevermind.
Colin, 26
Williamsburg resident
Done.
I would ask you if I were available. And had drunk enough first. Bourbon = courage.
Why in the world would you write something about break-ups and not write your something about break-ups? It's January now.
+8,372
Wait, I'm SO mad at you right now. Because last night on my way home I was snickering to myself about the pleading email I planned to send to La Balk reminding him of his commitments.(WHAT? MY MIND WANDERS.)
THIS.
also, i want that article to appear so i can refute it. i've been known to take break-ups horribly.
Shared email accounts are the worst. I know two couples who have one and both of them are like "steve_and_lisa_4ever@aol.com" and appear to be used solely for email forwards and sending pictures of kids.
Even worse when they aren't labeled like that. I recently sent an e-mail and it was sort of … personal in a way and went to both constituents of the maritial unit.
Erg, I have to say that I assume with my married friends that whatever I say to one is going straight to the other, joint email account or not. Which explains the content-less-ness of my conversations with them a lot.
Not much smut, then, I take it?
Right! I save my smut for the internet.
My sister does this but it shows up in her husbands name alone, minus the 4ever part. Drives me nuts because I never know who's actually sending me the email. Get your own damn email, you're a grown woman already!
I just exchanged emails with Steve and Lisa. Seem like nice folks.
How do the kids look?
I have on a couple of occasions feared that when I thought I was IMing with a friend of mine, I was actually talking to his wife.
Then I realized, no. He's just becoming more & more like her every day. Sigh.
I just share my e-mail password and then immediately change it. That way, I can judge, by the level of intimacy, whether or not he's tried to read my shit and been locked out.
I'm lying, I don't really do that. But I would if I had a boyfriend.
LOL in the people-who-think-it-means Lots-Of-Love sense
See, that's the kind of devious shit that a real relationship entails! I swear, these New York Times things are from an alternate universe.
Well, well, well. Looks like someone forgot to log out of their commenting account on The Awl, you disgusting pervert. Yes, that's right. I found it all; the emails to "your work friend" Diane, your passwords to MilfBus.com, Hooterville.net, GreaseyPoleSwingers.com, MidgetGrannyBikerChicks.com and GROSSSSSSS! I refuse to even type the rest of them because YOU ARE A FILTHY PIG!!!!!!! What normal person visits these sites?! And to think we slept in the same bed all these months! I am so STUPID!!!!! No more. It is over, buster. I am changing the pin to my checking account and AND YOU CAN FORGET ABOUT CHARGING ANY MORE LIQUOR TO MY AMEX!
Hey honey, I'm down here at the liquor store, they're not getting the Amex to go through for some reason. Also, weird: my cell phone isn't working. Did you forget to pay the bill this month? By the way, I'm on the cashier's laptop right now because I couldn't access your email account. Is your password still Monkeybutter1? I figured at some point today you'd check out The Awl, so when you get this can you bring down $50? Love you!
Riiiiight? Lamebook wouldn't exist without this, so let's not complain too much.
I don't buy that they're shared "to build intimacy." If you want access to my inbox the intimacy better be pretty fucking built already.
I've never divulged a password myself, but I have picked up a couple over the years — mostly when they're so abysmally dumb that I can't believe anyone would use them. Your birthday is your PIN? Your phone number is your password? You must be shitting me!
Also sometimes if I'm in the passenger seat I'll spill the beans so we can use a drive-up ATM. But, again, only if some pretty serious trust is already there.
Also the girl with the birthday PIN? Her defense was "well my parents use my birthday, too!"
I KID YOU NOT.
When my parents first got Internet access, including their own e-mail account, they made the address their their street address.
This is sort of like the old woman I overheard years ago at the Atlanta airport who said, upon hearing the electronic voice announcing that the next stop was Concourse A: "Oh, is there a robot driving the train."
I don't buy that they're shared "to build intimacy." Agreed. I think sharing passwords is a conscious or unconscious bid for SERIOUS DRAMA. So that when your favorite crime series goes on hiatus, you can spice things up with a sudden discovery of how high school ex-boyfriend Dave is having lunch with your wife on Friday.
So the upshot is that shared email accounts are the new way to appall others with your squicky level of intimacy. Seriously, every one of the people in this article are secretly loving that they had such an Intimate And Intensely Sharing Relationship. You just know that while they were still in the relationship, they could not stop talking self-righteously about the unprecedented level of Openness and Honesty and and and until their friends just wanted to scream.
The silver lining, of course, is that these relationships invariably implode in the most dramatic way possible, to the smug satisfaction of all observers who had to put up with hearing about how great it was to be so trusting, open, etc.
Squicky is my new favorite word.
Which begs the question – so did they like sit there while the other person deleted their singular email account?
Just like that "joint" bank account I used to share, but still kept my own separate account as well. "Shit hon, slow week at the restaurant. I practically LOST money going to work this week…can you get the groceries?"
I gave my contractor a key to my house and he's misplaced it, so I'm feeling pretty intimate with everywhere he's ever been.
There are much easier ways to "share intimacy" with your contractor than giving him your key, know what I'm sayin'. For example, a joint email address.
I used to work with a stupid girl who was dating a big even stupider guy with a penchant for cheating on her. She thought getting a shared cell phone account would make him more committed to her. Like I said, she was stupid.
I must be honest, I have floated from family plan to broken family plan a la serial monogamer, although it was about $$ and not a leash. It is an awkward post break-up conversation, "um, can you call AT&T and release my number? NO, TODAY. As if you don't have the time, it's not like you have to be at work."
Just did the same thing with my ex-husband. Talk about uncomfortable (but we were actually married for 20 years.)
I had to make my bf put passwords on his cell phones, so his wife wouldn't be able to access them. His password for them is her name, though…
I would have enjoyed your comment even more than I did, and I did, if you had written: "I had to make my bf put passwords on his cell phones, so his wife wouldn't be able to access them. His password for them is her name, AndreaStephens, though."
a/s/l/pw?
Sitting next to me on a bus recently there was a girl talking very loudly on her cellphone to her bank because she had lost her ATM card (not the first time this had happened I gathered from the conversation) who proceeded to recite HER NAME, ADDRESS AND SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER IN A LOUD VOICE ON A CROWDED BUS.
I shit thee not.
I was once ordering take-out from a restaurant, and the girl who answered the phone started repeating my credit card number to me out loud, presumably at the register which I knew damn well was right there in the dining room. I was like, "could you stop doing that please?" and she got really irritated.
Heh. The IT manager at my office does this with corporate account numbers & credit cards over the speakerphone to various vendors.
I was at a dinner party on New Years Eve in Queens where this same story was told. Do I know you, Lee?
Ladies, if you don't share passwords, how will you know your gay husband isn't hooking up with dudes?
Oh honey, we already know.
Just because we're fucking doesn't mean I wanna G-Chat with you.
Truer words, never spoken.
Overshare is probably one of the most useful words ever coined.
An acquaintance of mine said her 16 year old niece's boyfriend broke up with her. Now she's on facebook basically writing a diary of her angst to all of her "friends" on a daily basis. But the worst of it is that her MOTHER is actually encouraging her through comments on Facebook. She actually thinks it is good for her to get her feelings out there!
Someone needs to bring back LiveJournal – at least that shit was semiprivate (and hilarious)
Share passwords? NO THANK YOU.
I'm still working on upgrading from the I Love Lucy twin beds.
I'm blissfully married and found that idea positively shocking. You don't have to give up your privacy!! Jeeps.
Bosco!
Man, I felt weird giving my boyfriend my delivery.com password. But the omelet was well worth it.
My brother and his wife both regularly check each other's email accounts. Everyone else in our family thinks it's really weird. But even worse than the fact that they check each other's personal email is that they also do it with their work email. Given that they both work in fields that require confidentiality, I always wondered what their employers (and clients) would think about it if they knew. Can't think they'd be too happy.
This kind of reminds me of a "trend" WIRED reported back in the early days of iPods where perfect strangers would approach each other on the street and "jack in" to another person's iPod to listen to what they were playing.
Yeah right.