X rated: Perils of the sign-off kiss

See you soon xxx

Thanks very much x

With kind regards xx

xxxxxxxxx

How do you finish your messages?

Facebook, Twitter, G + and emails – every day I get dozens, and loads of them are signed with an X. Even lots of people I don’t know and haven’t any great desire to meet.

Only this afternoon I was e-kissed by a woman who sent my some jpgs of patio heaters – not a likely scenario for some virtual puckering up.

When I was at school it was simple – yours faithfully if you wrote Dear Sir or Madam and yours sincerely if you knew the recipient’s name.

If you were writing to someone you were on actual kissing terms – chaste or otherwise then that was different, but business was business. Not a snog in sight.

Not any longer. Perhaps a little unbuttoning was necessary, but it’s lips out all over the place in the modern digital world, inboxes slopping with puddles of drool…

What are me to make of all this internet osculation?

If someone Xs you, should you reply in kind or is that a little, ahem, kiss-ass? Will they be miffed if you snub their smooch?

Does it matter if the smacker comes from someone of the same gender or different? Is that the Internet equivalent of a lingering gaze?

All that’s troublesome enough, but what about the erroneous digi-kiss? You know – moments ago you were sending rude missives to your spouse and before you know it, you’ve submitted a story pitch to a news desk with a cheeky little x – or, worse, a doubler xx. Your fingers on the keyboard just did the same keystrokes – x x and x.

And as the message disappears into the ether with the saucy sign-off waggling it’s bum at the end, you picture the leery, beery commissioning editor clapping eyes on it. Oh no. You know exactly what he’s going to make of it and he can X off.

Do we need a code of conduct? How about only x-ing people who you’d x in real life? But what about those you’d like to x? And how to handle an incoming unsolicited x? Hmmm.

I don’t know.

It’s enough to make you want to get hold of a treasure map and see what happens at the spot X marks.

Failing that, go on holiday and stay where the only communication is the insincere “wish you were here”. Have an x-cellent time.

And that’s not what I meant either (Aktiv| oslo.no via flickr)

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