So I was at the new media expo last week, and Veronica mentioned the fact that she had too much bacon on her computer. At first I thought this was another one of those American things like, you know, when you need to deep fry your cheese and wrap it in solid high fructose syrup to enjoy it. I figured she had left some of the bacon dip from her “BBQ style cereals” on the desk or something. But it turns out it wasn’t quite that.

She was actually talking about “bacn”. And if you don’t know what bacn is, let me fill you in. Bacn is kind of like spam, except it’s the kind you sign up for. Twitter saying you have more imaginary friends, forums telling you that DeathStar34b replied to your thread about the practicality of Klingon motorcycle helmets, or Facebook letting you know that people need you to be a zombie-pirate or want to buy you for thirteen bucks or so.

The best way to describe it is probably “email you want, but not right now”.

It’s one of those beautiful things that are just so simple and elegant when you realize them that you wonder how you never thought of it before (the answer being, of course, that you are an idiot). I was subsequently struck by lightning and, all by myself, came up with the brilliant idea of actually setting up an email rule that would sort all of that crap into a specific folder. I cleverly named that folder “bacn”, and for almost a week now most of the email I’ve been getting in my inbox has been important things I actually want to read. Like people telling me about that YouTube video of a dog eating a sock.

So it’s not spam, which everyone has sorted out already (except for my dad), but it’s not email you really want clogging your inbox either. And the sort of clarity that comes out of just getting those little thing out of the way is invaluable. I assure you: you might think it’s a small thing, it’s not. Especially if you’re a social networking fiend which, let’s face it, if you even know about this blog, you probably are.

I realize I might be late to a two year old party here, and most of you might be thinking “damn, those french people really are lagging behind”. So first of all: hey! and second of all: yeah, ok. But still, if even one of you can have his sanity restored (or most likely her sanity restored, considering my stunning good looks mostly attract women to this blog) then it will have been worth it.

So to you, sir (or madam): you are welcome.