Fan Mail, or the Art of Knowing When to Stop

There’s a specific kind of email I’ve learned to recognize by its timestamp alone: sent somewhere between 1 and 3am, no subject line, at least two attachments, and an opening sentence that assumes a level of intimacy we have definitely not established. I’ve received a few of those. I’ve also received the ones that arrive in clusters of seven on a given Tuesday—same sender, same thesis, slightly different phrasing each time—as though repetition would eventually wear me down into responding.

Most people who’ve ever written to me have been genuinely interesting. Some of the best back-and-forth I’ve had over the years started with a comment left here. The feedback loop is real and I value it more than I usually let on. But a certain type of reader isn’t really engaging with the writing at all. They’re doing something else—assembling a version of me from fragments, running a low-grade parasocial project that involves my ex appearing in their friend requests on Facebook. That actually happened. More than once.

I am, by most objective measures, entertaining. This does not mean we are close. Write to me if you want to argue about a film or tell me I’m wrong about something—disagree loudly, that I enjoy. But if you’re messaging me on three separate platforms on the same evening, you need to recalibrate, and possibly speak to a professional. I say this with warmth, and with an extremely long playlist of the Pokémon Rap ready to deploy.