So, I signed up to Facebook. I created a MySpace page, and I'm currently trying to find a flat through FridayCities (email me for an invite if you like). Furthermore I signed up for updates from the National Theatre, the Donmar Warehouse, Bristol's Watershed and Apple. When I was asked if I wanted email alerts every time someone sent me a message / wrote on my Wall / breathed near a computer, I ticked the box and I said yes.
Offer me no sympathy; I knew what I was doing. I wanted to know when my friends were being friendly and when Apple were bringing out stuff I could beta test. So why is it that I feel a burst of irritated frustration every time these alerts - this "bacn" - actually appear in my inbox?
The term "bacn" was somewhat cloyingly coined to label the stuff that isn't spam but looks alarmingly like it. Maybe the reason we all feel so irritated by it isn't because we didn't ask for it but because it is, on the surface of it, virtually indistinguishable from the stuff we don't ask for, want or need.
Scanning through my inbox I can see only that there are, for example, ten unread emails and only four of them are from names of people I recognise. The others are either "noreply@randomsite.com" or "admin@rememberus.net". And really is that so different from seeing "bigboobs2007@fakeporn.com" when you're scanning quickly?
Then there's the attendant guilt. Okay, so your friends don't need to know that you know they sent you a message; the alert may have come in at 12pm, but if you don't reply until you have time at 2:30 then they don't need to know that you ignored them for two and a half hours... right? Except they're getting bacn too. So now not only do they know that you've put work before them (or whatever else you really have put before them, you lazy sod) but now the paranoia kicks in. You sent them a message at 10:45. They must have received the alert. So why are they not replying? What possible major crisis could have hit them that they didn't drop everything and get back to you within 13 microseconds of you hitting send? Hmmm? To say nothing of the psychosis that hits when the friend in question is actually your romantic partner.
So, rightly, around now you'll be thinking that I should just tackle the Bacn at its source and switch it off. Stop asking for alerts, stop expecting updates. Well, I could, but then I'd run the risk of not knowing what was going on. And then what would be the very point of having friends or a life? If I don't know when the next Punch Drunk Theatre Company event is coming up how can I fail to book for it in time with the full complement of self-kicking? If I don't know that Anna has sent me a lovely message listing every decent restaurant in Berlin (just in time for IFA too, God love 'er), how can I possibly feel the requisite finely tuned level of guilt at not having replied yet?
Bacn, I put it to you, is what keeps us on our Internet toes. Like the real thing it's initially yummy, then rather stodgy, greasy and nauseating, but ultimately moreish. Now please excuse me while I navigate the epistolary morass that is my inbox; I may be some time.
Alex Roumbas is Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny. Ashley has sent her an inhabitant for her Aquarium and she's guessing it's a cephalopod.
From: Five reasons Foursquare will be this year's Twitter