Snail Mail My Email, 83

Many of us will go home this evening and open up our mailboxes. Yes, the evening ritual of sorting bills and considering donations request, especially those envelopes with cleft pallets. Opening the mail is an emotional roller coaster; from the sadness brought on by student loans and financial statements, to the joy and hopefulness found in magazines and catalogs, followed by notes of shame, disgust and exploitation seen in donation requests. But every once in a while you get a letter, post card, and or greeting card. This not only brightens up your day but makes the world a betters place.

How would you feel if the person didn't hand-write your letter? What if Snail Mail Your Email sent it? What if interactive artist, filmmaker, and education Ivan Cash wrote it? Could we perhaps then add the feeling of betrayal to opening the mail?

Like the mail, Ivan Cash is a mixed-bag or jack of trades human-being. In 2011 Cash came up with the idea of re-writing folks emails (in the snail mail sense) and sending them out over the course of a month. As a result, the idea was wildly popular whers he received over 10,000 requests and had to enlist volunteers from around the globe to help with the writing. Since then, Snail Mail My Email SMME now takes one week out of every year to continue this path of enlightenment, or busybody-ness. While conceived as conceptual art Cash is commenting on the lost art of communication and engagement which is captured in his book (or your letters) Snail Mail My Email. Cash has also received fame and notoriety via Brokelyn, CNN, BBC, NPR, FastCompany, BuzzFeed, Gawker, TIME, The New York Time, and Justapoz. 

Although slightly less revered but equally as heartless, Or Arbel created the Yo app to only have debuted April Fools Day 2014. Arbel received over $1 million from investors, mainly by Moshe Hogeg CEO of Mobli who originally desired an one button app to call his assistant. Yo is about as simple as it gets, one button one friend, one yo, you know. That is it, no other words, no other functions, just Yo fo Yo. Although seemingly stupid, Yo is now valued at $5 to $10 million dollars, claiming to have been downloaded over 2 million times and equating to four million Yo's being sent in one day. 

Now if Yo isn't enough for the Mrs. and/or Misses, while outsourcing Cash to cash in on your love letters isn't in the stars, BroApp might buy you some time. BroApp is a hypothetical wingman who automatically responds to the ladies for you. The relationship guru is customizable to the relationship status and frequency, thereby even recognizing her home wifi signal and cancelling pre-scheduled messages. The important thing here is that you are no longer on your own in a relationship, with the meddling of other you can either streamline with a simple Yo or flowery up communication to suit your needs.