I suspect there's a strong correlation between the email account host and the place on the early adopter curve.
There's nothing wrong about wanting to live near other early adopters.
There's nothing wrong about wanting to live near other early adopters.
This whole conversation is disgusting. It's an email account. But since it's ubiquitous and mainstream, now it turns into this weird cultural thing where we have to make sure we have the right email account, lest we look like one of them.
Repeat after me: it's an email account. Not a reflection on your identity.
It's like when you visit a website and it's still using comic sans and looks like it was from the Geocities days, you form an impression. This is your brain do collaborative filtering. Same thing with email host.
Yes it's an email account, but they come in different flavors and some flavors are associated with the early adopter (cool kids) crowd (@gmail.com), and some are associated with their parents (@hotmail.com)
Unfortunately, the "cool kids" part gives you away. Like so many things in life, you win by opting not to play the [horribly broken] game.
Being secure in your identity means you don't have to partake in idiotic status signaling like this. Why? Because you just don't care about all the things you're told you should be doing in order to be 'relevant.' You're happy just to be you, and to do what you need to do. Culture still weighs on you, but it doesn't have to dictate your life. And you know what happens? Over time, people become more interested in you because of this. They may question you, but they may also envy you.
The path to discover one's true self is a lifelong journey, and I bid you good luck on it.
I am unsure of your intention here, but I think you are just not getting this at all. If you are assuming I am a cool kid then you are mistaken. I am a 42 year old software architect at a fortune 500 company.
I think you have this all backwards. Early adopters picked gmail (as did all their friends) not to signal, but because it was better, faster, more secure. Those that didn't and stuck with yahoo and hotmail (and who continue to have their accounts hacked) are perceived by others (no matter how secure they might be in themselves) as not keeping up.
Maybe an example will help, let's say you put your myspace account in your profile. You can be the most secure person on the planet, but people will look at your profile and a draw a conclusion.
"The path to discover one's true self is a lifelong journey, and I bid you good luck on it."
Haha - I think it's a bit of stretch to go from email host provider to some zen moment, but I guess you didn't really have any point to make, so resorting to condescension was the next best thing. :)
Now, let me get back to my Well account...