I’ve had several ex-students do this. One has been unresponsive to my explanation that I get several hundred e-mails a day and that I use my work e-mail address only for work, so thanks, but please don’t forward anything to me. In fact, the ex-student was offended and hurt, but didn’t stop the behavior. Now the spam filter blocks her nicely.
ETA: I also told her prior to the “don’t forward anything” request that I never read or forward chain mail, so if it mattered to her that recipients act on it, she shouldn’t send it to me. No effect.
If you play around with Gmail filters and use some of the “subject/has the words” fields for blocking, you may be able to block the spammier messages without blocking the person entirely.
The mental processes (or lack thereof) of the kind of people who send this are such that they will not understand when you tell them to stop sending you this trash. They won’t even see that what they are sending is trash to you (‘but prayer appeals are important!’). If anything, they will just be hurt & upset that you tell them to stop, and will complain to other family members. And they won’t stop.
You CAN stop receiving it, though.
Just tell your SPAM filter to recognize this stuff, and junk it into your SPAM folder. Maybe even put everything from this sender there. You won’t miss anything much of any importance. You will likely hear about important things from other family members.
But you will save yourself a lot of stress & aggravation by just trashing all such messages unread. No point in getting yourself upset about it, when they really can’t stop themself.
My advice: I would absolutely not say something like “please don’t send me this”. While glurge is silly, to tell someone who took the time to find you and was glad to get back in touch – to bluntly stop doing something – will come off wrong.
If its really that big a deal, put a filter on their name and have it move the emails or something. I say, consider it a chance to keep abreast of the glurge world
My cousin keeps sending me pics that were on some cheezburger network site c 2005, and don’t even get me started on the stuff that was on Urban Legends before it was snopes. Do they not have the internetz in Northumberland??
Not that I’d ever do this, but I’ve heard that some people fed up with glurge resort to “informing” the glurge-spewer of Rule 34. And maybe giving examples that fit with the glurge.
And maybe a few even venture into the pit of /b for some particularly interesting images which they forward to the glurger under headings like “OMG LUVVED UR MSG! HERES ANUTHER CUTE DOG!”
This will only serve to encourage her. This would be a last resort. If you are a teacher, then don’t worry about hurting her tender feelings. Just tell her, for her own good, and yours.
I’ve told several people that I hate forwarded cute, religious, political or gushy email and just delete it because of the virus threat, but love to hear from them with actual personal news. It’s worked each time, fortunately. Any person you can get through to helps make the virtual world a better place.
My brother and his wife forward anything that is anti-Obama or similar, and they never bother to check Snopes or anything else to see if it even has a smidgen of truth to it. I keep replying with the appropriate link to disprove it and hit reply all since they send to a lot of people. They have never brought it up but they sure don’t email this crap like they used to.
I have a friend that while I enjoy most of his e-mail I did not like his 12 Tribes Of Israel e-mails. He was trying to convert me. So every time he set me some I would send him back some Catholic email. He stopped once he realized how annoying it was.
Unfortunately, our HR manager is a serial glurge-ist. 99% of the emails he sends out are about the “activities committee” or “bake sale” or “book fair” or “employee of the month”, with 24 point bold red or green or blue text and lots o’ clip art. Either that or yet another memo about the dress code, along with copy of the policy attached in case you didn’t get it in one of the five hundred previous emails he sent about it. He also has a habit of using “jokey” subject lines, even for serious emails.
There have been a few times that I have almost missed an important announcement because it has gotten to the point that I just delete without reading anything that pops up with his name on it. Thank goodness I have coworkers that actually read some of this crap and give me a heads-up if I missed something important.
I give my “crap” email account to anyone that isn’t a professional contact until they prove they can email responsibly. Once I am sure their messages are glurge free I tell them I have a new email address and give them the one I actually use.
I have one aunt that sends 3-4 forwards to the crap account a day even after asking her to stop. I hope she never gets a hold of my real email address!
I usually reply with “Why the fuck are you sending me this stupid shit?” I usually don’t anymore email after that. Works for me. But I have one friend who sends me that crap because he knows it pisses me off.
If it is someone I actually want to continue to converse with I just delete the glurge. Takes 1/2 a second.
Heh, this has often been my experience with HR – some of them do love to broadcast announcements and random “posters”…I tend to think they need to get it out of their system, so I let them vent
I automatically delete unread everything that is forwarded. One oef my sisters sends that crap to me all the time. If there is an e-mail from her that isn’t a forward, I call her and ask if she sent it, because she did send a virus on time. I don’t want to hurt her feelings, and it takes no time just to delete it.
Be honest and direct and tactfully explain what you don’t want to receive without being unkind about it.
If it doesn’t work, just set up a filter that either deletes any email from her with a ‘Fwd’ in it or with any attachments.
If that doesn’t work, just set up filters to delete all her emails as soon as they arrive.
Worst case scenario is that just once in a blue moon she sends you something you might have been interested in, and you miss it. If she queries this, you can sweetly explain that the signal got lost among all the noise, or words to that effect. The time you save by not being bothered with all her prolific email garbage will more than offset any minor and occasional annoyance from not having seen something that might have been interesting.
I have a group of girlfriends I’m close with. We email (as a group) a lot. But I tell them all, right off the bat, I don’t do chain-email stuff ('email this to seven people within ten minutes and you will get a special blessing!!! Email it back to me, too!!!) so if they want to send me some particular chain email/glurge because they like the sentiment, fine. But don’t expect to get it back from me, because I just don’t. It’s a blanket policy (this prevents hurt feelings). Then I don’t. If they want to send me some glurge that says “I want to send this to all the beautiful women I know; If you receive it, then you will know I think you are beautiful; send it to all the beautiful women you know”. Then I appreciate the sentiment that they think, on some level, that I’m beautiful. But I don’t send it on.
It’s not that hard to delete it.
OTOH, if I was getting nothing but glurge from someone, I believe I’d put their address in my ‘junk mail’ folder and let it go right to ‘trash’.
Most companies have email policies that prohibit this kind of SPAMming of their network. File a complaint with the network administrator. I’ve done that. Being a manager, this person probably won’t get disciplined like a real worker would. But they will get some kind of kickback on this.
When I did this, I talked to my boss right after I had filed the complaint. Pointed out that it takes about 30 seconds to read such an email & delete it, he has sent 4 in the past week, there are 28 people in our department, that equals 56 minutes wasted in our department just in the last week! That got my boss’s attention, and he said he would follow up on this.
