I pit the f**k out of you, Cousin Eddie!

The BBQ Pit
1

No, unfortunately not the Cousin Eddie from Family Vacation. My own personal cousin Eddie, my mom’s cousin.

I always liked Eddie. He drove me and my sister to our grandfather’s funeral when we were little girls, and he kept cracking jokes the whole way there that really lightened the dour, funeral-y mood. He was always a fun guy.

But as soon as he figured out what e-mail was, he decided to start spamming me the the most inane Republican/conservative nonsense he could find on the web. You know the forwards of which I speak - the ones that decry Obama is a Muslim, a native African, a terrorist. Almost every single forward he sends, I can find its rebuttal on snopes.com. I’d send him the link to snopes.com, and he’d tell me I was being “naive.”

For a while there, I ignored him. Then I politely asked him to please take me off his mailing list. He continued the constant stream (3-4 emails a week). I started to get upset. My mom said I was being too sensitive. I saw Eddie at our family reunion last year, and I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to him. His wife of 30+ years died this summer, and I couldn’t even bring myself to write him to tell him how sorry I was to hear of her death.

Last week, he sent me an overtly racist forward, disguised as “humor.” I wrote him and told him that although I knew he would never stop emailing me his crap, that to at least not email me overtly racist emails.

Today he sent me another piece of Republican crap, and I finally snapped. My response was full of belligerent language. I told him, essentially, to fuck the fuck off. He responded that I was “naive,” “a liberal” (ouch!), and that I had a “dirty mouth.”

I blocked his email address as spam. No more stupid forwards.

I am so pissed off. True, the majority of my family is conservative, but I moved my ass out to the West Coast 10 years ago and never looked back. I have never tried to convince any of my family members that my beliefs were any better than theirs. I’ve never tried to convince them that Bush sucked, or that Palin is raving mad, or that gays should be allowed to marry. I don’t like to try to convince other people that I am right and they are wrong, especially when it comes to politics and morality.

But I expect the same respect from them. Is that so crazy?

I almost hope my actions cause some sort of distress to the family, so I can present my point of view (which is that Eddie should respect me enough to stop pushing his views/racism/intolerance on my after repeated requests to do so). He’s welcome to his views, of course - I would never deny anyone that. But doesn’t it say something about him that he refused to leave me off of his email list?
So, thanks for letting me blow off some steam. And if anyone wants Eddie’s email address so they can annonymously send him liberal forwards, I’d be happy to provide it.

peace.

smaje

2

Don’t argue politics wth family. Argue politics with strangers. Strangers who are nothing more to you that a coherent blob of electrons. Like a message board.

And even though I don’t know for sure that there is some rule against calling for a spam assault on somebody, I’m pretty sure there would be as soon as it appeared to happen, and right quickly, too.

By my last count, there are at least ten lawyers on this board. I’m betting they would advise against it. Loudly!

3

I’ve had people forward me this crap, and they all don’t seem to understand b.c.c.

So it’s goatse or granny porn for all of them. Rickrolls when I was feeling generous.

4

sigh elucidator, you’re completely right. I rescind my offer of Eddie’s email address.

But to be clear, I never argued with him about politics, just the veracity of statements that could be proven incorrect. And then I begged and pleaded with him to just leave me the hell alone, but he wouldn’t. It was his refusal to stop harassing me with his emails that really set me on edge, not his political views.

And Blank Slate, goatse would’ve been such a great thing to send him. Fortunately, for my own mental health and the sake of my unborn child (who no doubt feels my blood pressure rise when I communicate via email with Eddie), I will have to sweep all this under the rug.

I just caught another thread on the Pit about a similar situation - unwanted forwards. I guess it’s something we’ll just have to live with in the digital age.

5

For a certain variety of conservative the answer is “yes, that’s crazy talk” because they DON’T respect any beliefs other than their own. Failure to adopt their viewpoint is a sign of either being naive or evil.

My condolences that your cousin seems to be one of these sorts.

6

Well, yeah it is, if you can’t be bothered to find someone to teach you how to block known offenders.

When I saw the paragraph where you finally took the step of blocking him, I thought “What took you so long?”

Sorry, I don’t mean to appear unsympathetic to what you’ve been going through. I guess I have some assumptions about how much it should take to provoke that action,and they don’t quite match up with yours.

Anyway, take care of yourself and your babby! When are you due?

7

I used to send my mom the snopes links until I realized that she never checked snopes, because then she might have to ::gasp:: NOT forward a Tea Party email to her hundred dearest friends!

Then I got one from her that said “Don’t know if this one is true, but it doesn’t matter, because it should be.”

So I asked to be taken off her Forwards list. Now she remarks (EVERY time she sees me) “I found the NICEST email, but of course I’m FORBIDDEN to send it to you…”

“Well, mom, if it’s that animal babies one…”

“No, it’s a touching story from Glenn Beck about the first slave owners being black… but of COURSE, NOW you’ll probably NEVER read it…”

“Breaks my heart, mom.”

8

I have a friend I’ve known since childhood who’s pretty much diametrically opposed to my politics. He loves to send me the most inflammatory, grossest crap he can find, hoping to get a rise out of me. I’ll bet he literally giggles like a school girl as he clicks the “send” button. Yep, I’ve got my own private troll.

The problem is that he’ll occasionally send me an e-mail I’m actually interested in, so my wife acts as my “Ed” filter.

“You got another e-mail from Ed, hon!”
“What is it?”
“Let me see . . . A picture of Obama with his head up a fat woman’s butt! Do you want me to delete it?”
“Yes, please.”

9

Maybe his shitter’s full.

(I know, I know, I read the first sentence of the OP, but you know that sooner or later someone was going to come in here and make a National Lampoon’s joke).

10

Hey! I have a cousin Eddie who is a beer-swilling, wife-beater in rural Mississippi!

11

Oh, I knew long ago how to block his email address - it’s just that now that I have, I can’t receive any emails from him (like the one he sent out this summer informing me that his wife had died). It saddens me that I had to effectively cut off all email communication with him, but I guess Ill just have to rely on the grapevine for all other news.

My baby is due Dec. 8, thanks for asking. :slight_smile: It’s a girl, and we just saw 3D ultrasound pictures of her - crazy!

And seriously, just being able to bitch about this whole Eddie situation here in the Pit has made me feel soooo much better. I appreciate the SD folks who threw out their input!

12

My stupid email doesn’t seem to have a block address feature - I saw “two girls, one cup” against my will thanks to an idiotic “friend,” and I can’t even block him forever and ever. I need a better email address.

13

Some email clients allow you to filter out emails by both name and subject line; one of my friends does this for his mom. So, for instance, you could set it so that you don’t see any emails that are both by your Cousin Eddie AND contain Fw:, Fwd:, etc. in the subject line.

However, I’m going to be the voice of dissent here and say that your mom’s right; you’re being a bit of a jerk. From what you told me, it seems like you like all the other aspects of his personality; you just don’t like his politics and his propensity towards annoying-ass emails.

He’s being a cock about this, but it shouldn’t be a big deal, 'cause–here’s the thing–it’s easily avoidable. You can delete the e-mails. You can block him, or block just his forwards. You can choose to engage, and live with the results either way. But at the end of the day, some people just turn into absolute fucking morons when they’re presented with an email account, and some of those same people have really crappy political beliefs. Sucks, but there it is.

Someone’s wife dying is way bigger than that. Family ties are usually bigger than that. And, quite frankly, the place for hard-fought battles of ignorance isn’t shouting over the family table at Christmas dinner, literally or metaphorically. Suck it up, filter your email, and apologize for blowing up.

(Disclaimer: my family doesn’t forward those sort of emails, mostly because the majority of them are dyed-in-the-wool liberal. I have, however, engaged with my dad in a shouting match over Christmas Eve dinner about the decline of the English language. Same concept, different venue).

14

My dear sister is a fan of Fox and very republican. I was being forwarded a bunch of BS. She is also a conservative Christian. I wrote a detailed response to several of the emails hoping that she and others on her list would read them. Finally I got tired of the frequency and I gave examples of why a particular one was false and suggested to her that forwarding things she hadn’t bothered to verify as factual was bearing false witness, and she should be careful. I stopped getting the Emails.

I do think it’s rude and inconsiderate for your cousin to not respect your wishes to be off that forward list. I also wonder why you didn’t take action sooner rather than wait and go a bit overboard. After you asked him politely to stop you could have just blocked his Email or told him that all his Emails were going straight to the trash {where they belonged} There’s nothing that requires you to read junk mail. Just delete it without reading it. Was there some compulsion to look at it after you new it was the crap you described?

15

It still doesn’t make much sense to me. You couldn’t manage a letter of sympathy about his dead wife {shame on you} but you didn’t want to block his address?

You could have informed him that you were going to block him for not respecting your request and told him, or other family members that any family information should come by phone, or email from someone who would respect your boundaries. He was wrong, but I think you could have handled it better. We’re human and stuff happens I hope it doesn’t cause any permanent family issues.

16

How on earth did that happen? Wasn’t that a video? Even if he sent you the link, surely you were able to stop that entire thing from playing?

17

I know how annoying political forwards are. But, a close family member’s wife died and you couldn’t take the time to write him a letter expressing your condolences? Yet you had plenty of time to write him to ask him to stop sending the emails? I agree with your Mom. You are too sensitive over these emails and I would add that you are being a trifle bit self centered, as well.

Uh and in rereading the thread. What Angel of the Lord and cosmodan said.

Everytime my Aunt would send me some dumb republican forward. I would reply all (she didn’t use BCC) with an email quoting the appropriate sources that refuted the “facts” that were being pushed. It was a marvelous day when my Mom told me about a conversation with this Aunt where she said “Oh. I don’t send political emails to Patrick any more.”

18

You could start sending him stuff you know he won’t like or will find offensive, like gay porn or invitations to pro-choice rallies or whatever it is that’s sure to offend him, then when he asks YOU to stop sending him that crap, tell him he’s being “naive” and “close-minded.”

19

Right, cause that’s taking the high road.
I agree that getting these types of emails is annoying—it seems that one of my siblings posts here under the name digs, in fact, right down to sniffy “I’m FORBIDDEN to send it to you” comment by Mom. But, really, what we all have is control over the degree we react to this. No one said you had to read them, even if you don’t have a filtering capability on your email.

20

Whoa. To be fair, my mom never called me a jerk.

I could easily have blocked his emails long ago, but absolutely, there was a strange compulsion to read the stuff he sent me. Just to see how crazy it was, you know?

Perhaps some of you who diagree with my actions could answer this question for me:

If a relative (a significantly younger relative) asked you politely, then frustratingly, then angrily, to stop sending her emails she deemed offensive, why wouldn’t you comply with her wishes? If she told you the emails were upsetting to her, for any reason whatsoever, what would compel you to keep sending them? That’s the part I just don’t get.