I Need Advice
by Zia ~ February 1st, 2006. Filed under: Exigencies.How does one broach the subject of e-mail forwards with very nice, sweet relatives and acquaintances of a certain age for whom e-mail is the best thing since sliced bread? It’s standard stuff — jokes, pet pictures and those horrible “send this to 20 people or you’ll die a gruesome, painful death” missives. So far, I’ve been hitting delete the moment I hear that little ping. However, at this point, I’m up to about four a day from four different people — so about one a day per person.
Which is great for apples and vitamins — but not much else.
And that’s not even counting all the people responding to everyone on the original list.
I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I’m about to lose it. Advice anyone? Please?
February 2nd, 2006 at 10:46 am
The problem with your friends is they’re not considering _you_ when they fire off their missives, so you might want to open that particular subject with ‘em. Something like this might work:
“So, Betty. I have some thoughts about the kinds of e-mail I like to receive. You might want to ask me about it sometime?”
Or:
“Jane: Do you have a list that you send your jokes out to? Because if you do I’d like to get off it.”
Or, for something more impersonal consider replying with the following in the subject line:
“UNSUBSCRIBE”
Your newbie friends might not know what it means, but if they ask you then you can explain.
February 2nd, 2006 at 11:09 am
These aren’t from friends, though. They’re relatives whose feelings I really don’t want to hurt. Maybe they’ll see this post …
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Create a throw-away email address on Yahoo! or Gmail and give that “new address” to those “Spamming” you with all their good intent. Then you filter their mail into folders and check it once a week to empty out all their stuff.
We talked about this in the comments on my blog for this article:
http://urbansemiotic.com/2006/01/26/curiosity-killed-the-inbox/
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Excellent idea! I hadn’t even thought of telling them to use one of my throw-away e-mail addresses instead! And I can disguise it under the assertion that I’m trying to reserve my main address for work purposes only! You ROCK!
February 2nd, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Or if that’s too obvious you’re hiding from them, you can use your email client to mark their messages read and filter them into a “family” folder that won’t alert you to their arrival and you can clean out the folder when you have a bored moment.
February 2nd, 2006 at 6:40 pm
Brilliant — but far too much effort.
I’m e-mailing them to use a junk address!