(no subject)

[sigmaleph]

Some day I want to meet the guy in Chile whose name is similar to my deadname and consequently keeps signing up to things using an email address that I control and he does not. He is a surprisingly constant figure in my life and I can't tell if he knows I exist at all.

Comments

[contrarianarchon]

Fortunately for me my grandfather got the email with the format my parents suggested before me, so mine comes with a number and therefore zero collisions. On the one hand no mild annoyance, on the other no anecdotes.

(have you considered emailing him? The namespace is presumably not *that* wide?)

[sigmaleph]

seems kind of awkward for all the other people who also have a similar name, especially if we need to disambiguate.

*I* wouldn't answer an email that was like "Hi, we've never met before, is your name [name] and do you use any of the following services:". I don't know what I'd think but "some kind of scam whose particulars I do not understand" would be a conspicuous possible answer

also separate from that repeatedly cold-emailing strangers sounds really stressful.

[contrarianarchon]

That's fair. I once (on noticing that I know ~2 people with the same handle on discord) considered making a server for people-whose-handles-are-archon but didn't end up going through with it. Strangers *are* stressful, though.

(Didn't occur to me that it might be a scam; I'd be straight-up honest about "I'm emailing people with adjacent emails to track this guy down, if you're not him you've probably received some of his emails as well" but like, weird as hell scams exist)