Why have I been hoarding 39,674 emails?
Wakeham called an email cull 'something really tangible people might not think of that can make a difference', and I do want to make a difference. I don't use water-gobbling ChatGPT, I comply with the hosepipe ban (albeit swearing at Yorkshire Water as I slop washing-up water into my shoes transporting it to my dying plants) and my showers are so short they're basically pointless. So I checked my inbox: 39,674 emails dating back to 2009. Ugh.
And what emails! I sampled a random month in 2017 and it was mostly ads (for everything from Pokémon cards to a Thai cafe where I once used the wifi), plus low battery alerts for my long-defunct FitBit, updates on a rat I sponsored (also, surely, long-defunct), PTA round robins and a rudely rejected pitch. Why did I keep them? Why do any of us? Inertia, and overwhelm; irrational anxiety we might need some of it 'someday'; a misplaced belief there's gold in them thar folders (a gif of a leopard trying Marmite I once sent myself admittedly sounded golden, but the link was dead).
Maybe – and I'm mostly trying to convince myself here – we could cast off this thirsty digital comfort blanket. Will HMRC ever demand proof I went to Peterborough in 2011? Could I find that cookie recipe another way (say, ooh, by Googling it)? Is a forensically detailed discussion of Gap boyfriend chinos really vital material for my memoirs? Join me, and let's free ourselves of decades of digital dross. We have nothing to lose but a complete record of every pizza we ordered 2012-2025.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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