Most of us have, at some point, had a questionable email address; the sudden understanding that “bigtoker42069@hotmail.com” is possibly not a wholly suitable handle with which to apply for jobs is something of a modern rite of passage.
What would you do, though, if you had the email address of an actual deity?
My friend Scott (I am keeping his surname a secret for perhaps obvious reasons) was an engineer at Google in the early 2000s. Gmail, now the world’s most popular email service, was being developed, and staff were encouraged to sign up to the nascent product and pick their addresses.
As Scott tells it: “I worked with a large range of people, one of whom was very religious. I suddenly realised I could pick something that made me laugh and annoyed him. So I did.”
While Scott understandably doesn’t want his actual details published in a national magazine, imagine that Jesus had a professional email address – it’s basically like that. And so Scott chose to become Jesus Christ. Digitally, at least. For 20 years, his inbox has been a mix of the devout, the desperate and the frankly delusional, mixed with emails from his actual friends and family – in an admirable commitment to the bit [the comic routine], this is Scott’s primary inbox.
What, though, do people elect to share with the divine when given the opportunity to make direct contact? There are five main types of correspondence, Scott explains; the short, puerile messages from schoolchildren who have just realised that you can theoretically email anyone, and who decide to email Jesus to tell him “my friend Stephen eats shit every day”. There are the wishlists; per Scott, “these mostly seem to originate from Nigeria and the Philippines. They are quite simple in nature – the broad gist is, ‘Hey Jesus, I’d like this new car or speedboat’.”
Inevitably, there are also cries for help. “This has become something of a challenge,” says Scott, “akin to being a cameraman and watching something horrific and not knowing what to do. I get quite a few stories that are heart-wrenching and sad in nature. I think it’s good for people to express them, I just wish it wasn’t to me.”
There are the broadly inexplicable; songs and pictures and rambling messages, a braindump of the infinite surreal. Finally, Scott explains, there are “the communicators – these emails have died off in recent years, for reasons unknown, but I used to get letters sent to me, and PowerPoint slides. They are nearly all incoherent and unsettling in nature. I would receive tens of emails a week from one specific individual, who, oddly enough, would also cc in the likes of Jehovah, Buddha, Hitler and Barack Obama. These were from people who were clearly suffering, so again, it’s a weird position to be in. I tended to read them and then go for a walk.”
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What, though, do you do when you are the owner of an email address that attracts, by Scott’s own estimation, thousands of inbound messages from strangers over the years, seeking help or absolution or undergoing very real distress? The answer is “nothing”.
“I have never replied. EVER. It became apparent quite quickly that I had somehow picked an address with real-life meaning. I clearly hadn’t thought through the idea that people thought Jesus had returned and had set up a cloud-based email account before announcing his arrival. I also believed, and still do, that if I start replying as Jesus that is, psychologically, a line that only leads to a bad place. I AM NOT JESUS.”
I ask if there have ever been moments when he’s considered contacting the police or other relevant authorities based on anything he’s received. “I do get some real dark emails, but I wouldn’t know how to help, to be honest. I mean, where is the line here? I get messages where people are having a very hard time and it’s gut-wrenching, but I don’t think I should respond or escalate. I have never had a real moment where I felt like I had to do something.”
This might seem frivolous or childish – and maybe it is – but it also has a strange relevance in a world in which we’re starting to see the first reports of the vulnerable being negatively affected by their interactions with AI models; Reddit is awash with people claiming to have “found God” within an LLM (large language model). It’s hard not to wonder whether the people who might once have contacted Jesus/Scott with their issues might now instead turn to ChatGPT instead, and whether the fact The Machine will talk back is really better than being ghosted by “God” over email.
I ask Scott whether the experience of owning the divine inbox has altered his opinion on religion and our relationship with it. “The concept that people contact Jesus on email asking for help/guidance tells you a lot about where we are as humans. It’s clear that religion is an internal support mechanism and plays a role on a personal level. Beyond that, not really. Religion seems to be a pretty reductive way of describing what the hell this is all about, I’ve never really bought into that.”
Would he ever take the name of a major figure of worship as his email again? “No, but I did have an idea to email all the other deities and see if this is a wider thing. I like the idea of a UN-style table and we are all sitting there, confused.”
Finally, I ask whether he’d consider passing it on, a sort of franchised digital God. Scott reflects a moment before responding: “A few people have suggested that it might be worth a lot of money, so if someone wants to buy it, I am sure I am open. I need a new roof and have guttering being done, so that would be helpful.”
Enquiries to the New World at the usual address.
Matt Muir is author of the online culture newsletter Web Curios
