Sleeping and E-mailing Don’t Mix

Dear Friend and Reader:

Federal laws are being proposed today toВ stem the tide of EWS (Emailing While Sleeping), a disturbing, dangerousВ andВ growing type of somnambulism affecting millions of computer-addicted adults across the country. This new form makes sleepers in deep REM stateВ get up out of bed, turn on their computers, log on to their email accounts and send out everything from party invitations to love notes to hate mail.

Sleep experts and legislative analysts from Smeer-Lactosis & Grim (SL&G), a Washington DC-based, K-Street lobbying firm had this to say:

“We’ve heard anecdotal evidenceВ from large numbers of people emailing out invitations to do everything from sorting hell holes out with dinner and drinks, wine and caviar only, toВ a ‘come toВ a naked in front of all your relatives party, Freud and Jung-optional attire’. Needless to say, this has wrecked havoc on the 18-34 year-oldВ demographic population, which sees any variety of reason to hold an all-night party orВ rave as a serious invitation, particularly if its done on Evite. This leads to mass confusion, fear, hysteria and ultimately, screws with your Blackberry calendar function.”

TheВ SL&G advisor continued, “The ramifications of not doing anything could be severe”.

To attack the growing epidemic, SL&GВ is workingВ with members of CongressВ onВ an anti-sleepwalking stimulus bill on its way through committee right now. “We need to attachВ an EWSВ clause to any new highway or virtual superhighway legislationВ in congress from here on out. Everyone is sleeping through life. We hope this will wake them up.”

“After all,” theВ SL&G adviser concluded, “you can never tell whether an email party В invitation isВ legitimate. SPAM filters do not yet have the capability to recognize and filter out an e-mail sent by someoneВ in theВ REM state.”

Howard Cole, the chairman of People for the Separation of Somnambulism and State, a grassroots organization aimed at protecting the rights of sleepwalkers, disagrees. “You can’t legislate sleepwalking. And by that we also mean sleep-emailing. We’ve seen numerous studies that say it’s a waste of taxpayer’s money to make laws about what we do while we’re asleep. You have a right to sleep through life if you want to.”

However, a 2007 study Carnegie-Mellon University might support the current bill. It found the danger of “sleep-mailing” lay primarily in the receiver’s response. Each of the 267 participants from the university community received the same poorly formatted email composed of non-sequitors written in a random mix of upper and lower case letters. The odd nature of the email was easily detected by 93.7% of the 40-60 year old group and by 83.9% of the 30-39 year old group. However, the younger recipients had difficulty distinguishing it from legitimate messages. Only 15.4% of 20-29 year-olds recognized it as unusual, and only 8.5% of the 17-20 year old group (mostly first year undergraduates) properly identified the joke.

“We think it’s a matter of style and formatting,” said Gayla Lilly, the sociologist who headed the study. “Young people disregard things like capitalization and punctuation in all their informal written language. And from what I’ve received from my lower division students, much of their formal written work, too. However, formatting, grammar and syntax are important clues to tone and meaning. They help distinguish legitimate discourse from jokes. One might conclude from this study that our youth are most at-risk when they encounter sleep-mailing because they are least likely to distinguish a legitimate invitation from a sleep-mail episode.”

Cole isn’t bothered by the study’s implications: “If 40 kids show up on my doorstep with wine and caviar, what’s that to Congress? The liquor store who sold them the booze should pay, not me.”

These well-documented cases of EWSВ could beВ the tip of the iceberg.В В AnalystsВ fear that sleep-mailing could be part of a larger trend.В  Dr. Helen Lactosis, principal partnerВ of В SL&G noted, В “we’re beginning to document cases of mobile somnambulistic communication done from a Blackberry while someone sleepwalks, such as up Lexington Avenue. This is extremely serious and getting worse with the proliferation of mobile devices.”

Dr. Lactosis mentioned that her firm is also gathering data from California’s State Highway Patrol who are finding an alarming increase of drivers texting while driving asleep.

Members of Congress working on the EWS bill could not be reached for comment.

Yours & truly,

Fe Bongolan
San Francisco

Shanna Philipson
Tulsa