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My Online Double

I tend to react to social media sites in the same, middle-aged way: I moan about them, watch my friends jump on board, then make a silent U-turn.

Last week I caved and got Twitter.

I was governed by a need to curb my illegitimate Facebook hashtagging and a misguided notion that Twitter is “like Facebook, but with more intelligent people”. Warning: careful cultivation of an employer-friendly, ‘I’m so cultured’, pristine profile is easily dashed by one swift, reckless follow. This was literally the case for me when I followed ‘FeministTaylorSwift’ (I regret nothing).

I was left infuriated at Step One on the road to this shiny, new form of procrastination, however, when my name was already taken. No big deal you may say. It happens. Tweeter @JohnLewis has been cordially responding to complaining customers of @JohnLewisRetail for months, bless him.

But this minor username setback was the culmination of constant online frustration, the lengthening of a cyber-shadow hanging over me, the latest threat to my internet identity.

For the past two years, I have been receiving the emails of another Rebecca Fairbank. Doesn’t sound too traumatic, does it? After all, people get junk mail all the time. Oxford accounts have previously been bombarded by dodgy-looking companies offering to do essays for us. It’s blatant and it’s shocking. An article on the perils of commercial cheating would probably have been a more intelligent contribution, but the Exam Regulations doorstop has got that covered. These spamming companies may be morally questionable, but at least they reached their target (stressed fresher) market. Top marks for trying.

I’m not concerned here with mass marketing emails, but with masses of emails sent to me. Over the years I’ve inadvertently received an eclectic, comical range of offerings meant for my Email Doppelgänger. Highlights include:

  1. Four security passes from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, granting access to a meeting at the Bundestag. The email itself was encoded in the name of ‘heightened security arrangements’, so my response telling them that they had breached their own security bounced. Oh the irony.
  2. An award from the History of Art department of an American University. This was the most disappointing of all the misdirected emails. I was waiting to receive an art history essay back from a tutor at the time, and so wildly overestimated my own abilities on first glance.
  3. Constant messages from a woman called Faith, the Young Woman’s leader of a Rhode Island church. She’s pretty peeved that Rebecca didn’t help out at church camp, despite her e-card pleas.
  4. Weekly parenting emails. Did you know that babies start rolling over when they’re 3 months old?

This last example landed in my inbox relatively early on in the saga. At first I thought my friends’ had set me up based on the fact that I am the least broody person ever to be graced with ovaries. Their denials led to some thorough Facebook stalking. The mystery was solved: I found an American, pregnant, graduate, Christian, Rebecca Fairbank (who lived in Berlin for a year, fyi).

This should be the end of the story. I attempted to contact her, I disowned her Dad, I restored Faith’s faith (sorry) in her online organisational skills. But after a brief respite, the emails kept coming. Maybe it’s a technical glitch, or she gives out the wrong address on purpose, or her contacts have old mailing lists. In the case of her Dad, Bob – well he’s just forgetful, look how long it took him to forward that email from Aunt Jeanne (she sends her love to baby Rachel by the way).

It’s clear that I know way too much about this woman’s life. I know her parent’s names, her town, her former university. It’s a fraudster’s dream; it’s a nuisance. I spend a fair amount of time replying to random people, “From Another Rebecca Fairbank”. But despite this, I can’t help but feeling a strange sort of affinity with my online double. After five months of receiving maternity hospital newsletters, I was genuinely excited to hear the news of the birth of baby Rachel. I’d been privy to baby shower proposals, Bob was sending me baby gear ideas – basically, my inbox was as pregnant with plans as the parents-to-be.

I’ve also gained an insight into a life lived to the full. Here was someone putting my name to better use than me. The fact that I initially thought the emails were intended for several different people – the diplomat, the volunteer, the expectant mother – stands testament to a person successfully juggling the demands of modern life, in a way that seems implausible on paper. And that’s inspiring. Friends have advised me to change my email address. But if the postman kept delivering someone else’s letters to your house, would you move?

So, without starting a Sinead-Miley style spat: let this be an open letter to you, American Rebecca Fairbank. It’s been quite a journey. But please stop giving out my email address. And give my love to Aunt Jeanne.

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