I am ashamed to admit that if I meet someone with an AOL e-mail address, I judge them. This is true of e-mails on resumes, in online dating profiles, and provided for by potential penpals. In my head I’ve developed an ever-changing hierarchy of webmail applications with AOL residing at the bottom. I realize that this is stereotypical, unprofessional, and unfair.
I wanted to see if others carried such stereotypes so I did a quick websearch. Most of the top hits referenced efforts by a website called Hunch which appears to specialize in non-scientific surveys that get giddy over data correlation. I found this huffingtonpost article which recaps the Hunch results mildly nauseating:
What did I learn from this exercise? Instead of researching to see if other people have similar stereotypes, it’s probably smarter to just try and stop judging people and strive to keep an open mind.
There’s also this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_address
At least it doesn’t try to be scientific in any way.
Agreed. No science here = a positive.
see, this is the trouble I’m having. I got a resume for an IT guy with an AOL address… ahh! Stop it Mike D! … must… stop… judging…
How do you know that he doesn’t have that AOL address as a badge of honor and that it forwards to his own custom-designed email datacenter?
Plus, aol users like sweet snacks and working on a team. Who doesn’t like that guy!?
If Jon Abad approves I have no option but to approve as well.
That said, if he starts asking you about what kind of modem you’re using, kick him out!
I’m not gonna lie… I am often shocked when I see people still use AOL all together!