That’s right. I was driving down the street earlier, when a guy in the passenger seat of the Explorer next to me motioned for me to roll down my window. I did, thinking he was going to tell me I had a flat or some such. He waved, then said, “Can I have your email address?”
What?!
Is the email addy the new phone number? Is this how dating works now? I don’t think I scream “cybergirl” from my appearance, and he looked like the average ex-frat boy.
So what gives?
It was bound to happen! 
It is a lot easier to compose yourself so you don’t sound stupid on the first impression.
And besides, you looked cute and my friends dared me to!
This is very common, in my experience. Nearly everyone seems to have an email address nowadays. It’s a form of personal communication that isn’t as personal as a telephone. It’s cheaper, easier in some ways (won’t get a busy signal and have to try back every five minutes), and doesn’t carry the risk that giving out a phone number does.
In my experience, many people would rather give out an email address than a phone number. The guy was probably thinking that he had a much better chance of getting your email address than your phone number, which is why he didn’t ask for that instead.
I prefer giving (and getting) email addresses to phone numbers. Usually easier to remember and not as risky.
I agree with BlackKnight. Getting unsolicited email can be annoying IMHO, but much less than being phoned by someone one doesn’t know. It could well have been meant polite by that boy.
Now I feel bad for saying no. Dammit.
I heard that it is the new “hey could I have your phone #”, It’s less threatining to ask or give. It’s a chance to be able to contact someone in a non=threatining way. It gives the asker a better shot at getting it.
Also it gives the person a chance to correct any flubups that might happen due to nerviousness on the phone.
“Hello is this the person…i mean are you the one that I met the other night…”
Shrew, I wouldn’t feel bad for saying no. I probably would have thought it was odd, too
I realize that it might be easier to get an email address than it is to get a phone number (especially if you’re in traffic and have only seconds to mack on someone), and quite frankly probably wouldn’t have given the dude my phone number, either, without the chance to at least talk to him for a few minutes (unless he looked like Benjamin Bratt, in which I would have given him whatever info he requested–hell, I would have opened up a PO box for him to write to me, if that’s what he wanted. ;)).
I think, though, that my refusal might have had more to do with the whole “drive thru” method of macking. Here’s a total stranger asking for my email (or phone number), and we haven’t had so much as a 10-minute conversation? I’d probably pass (though again… all bets are off for Benjamin).
along those lines…
one evening i was on a PATH train back to jerseyland. at one point i looked up and saw a man several feet away smiling at me. having been raised in the rural deep south, i smiled back, then returned to my own little world-in-my-head and thought nothing of it.
a few stations later, he walked up to me just as the door opened and asked, “do you have instant messenger?”
i blinked and said “yes.”
he pushed a piece of paper into my hand and said “message me sometime.” and then he dashed out of the still-open doors.
that’s it. no introduction, no conversation…nothing other than the concept that he must have found me intriguing from my appearance and wanted for me to initiate later conversation with him.
So starkyld… did you IM him?
Being a guy who has a hard time making a pass at a woman, I’m eagerly awaiting your answer, starkyld!
Exactly. If he and I had been talking at a coffee shop or something, and then he asked for my email address, fine. But the whole scene just reminded me of that damn TLC song No Scrubs.
No, I don’t want no scrubs. A scrub is a guy who can’t get no love from me, hanging out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride, trying to holla at me.
And he may have been a really nice guy, but in the two seconds I had to assess him, in which all I had to go on were his looks and that he would scream at me from another vehicle to give him my email, all I could get out of my mouth was a chuckle and “no.”
I’ve had people come up to me and ask for my (aol) SN… Sadly now I know many ppl just by their sn.
And aol sucks, i only go there because there’s nobody anywhere else.
So, clayton_e, can I add you to my AIM list? 
I haven’t had anyone come up to me and ask me for my email address or IM names yet… I’d probably think it was rather strange. However, email does give you a chance not to sound all nervous and schoolchile-ish, like you probably would on the phone.
F_X
antie em, flyboy88…well, there’s a story behind that as well…
i had no interest in this boy. zero, zilch, nada. he had done nothing to engage me in conversation, so i didn’t know of any commonalities in that regard. and i didn’t find him physically appealing in the slightest.
however…
the screenname he’d given me on the brochure indicated that he’s a surrealist anthropologist.
i’m an evolutionary anthropologist.
nothing on my person gave any indication of my career field whatsoever.
so the sheer bizarreness of having-been-hit-on-unawares by a fellow anthropologist was just too much for me to let pass by without comment.
i messaged him a week or so later. i told him rather directly that his tactic probably isn’t going to net him much success with girls and that i wasn’t interested in pursuing any romantic entanglements with him. we’ve had reasonably-pleasant IM-conversations about evolutionary behaviourism and surrealist ethnography ever since. it’s a friendship firmly grounded in social-science.
(but he does get a bit schnippy if i mention my boyfriend. ah well.)