I hate to be one of those “how does this sound” people, especially regarding an e-mail that’s already been sent, but I got an unexpected reply from someone and it’s really making me wonder. Last night I sent the following message to a handful of friends and family members, all of whom I have received more than one forwarded e-mail from:
This is the version I settled on after several attempts at explaining my reasoning and/or explaining that I did not mean for any of these people to stop sending me e-mails altogether. In the end, I figured it was a pretty straightforward request, and that there was no reason for me to explain or justify it. Was I too blunt or something?
I was a little emotional when I wrote it – I’d just gotten yet another thoughtlessly forwarded e-mail that insulted me (it literally said “sit down and shut up”) for having different political/religious beliefs than the sender – but I’d been thinking about making such a request for a long time, and even drafted a similar e-mail a few months ago (which I never sent out). Also, the person whose reply surprised me is not the most stable member of my family, so while I can’t dismiss their reaction entirely I also can’t take it as an example of ‘normal.’
So, my rational, mature fellow SDMBers, whaddya think?
(Aw, what the heck: I’m interested in your opinion even if you aren’t rational or mature… )
Thanks everyone. I try to be careful when composing things like that, but oftentimes the same people who send glurge will be ‘offended’ by a request that they stop. The “sit down and shut up” e-mail I got last night was the straw that broke this camel’s back, though: while I know I could simply delete anything with “fwd” in the subject line, I have a few friends who will actually reference these messages in later conversations and be ‘hurt’ if I haven’t read them. I refuse to continue to be randomly insulted by people I know (and in most cases, love), so I figured it was just best to ask for no more.
That was soo much more polite than mine was. I said something along the lines of: “If I don’t mean enough to you to think of something yourself to write to me, its time to not write to me.”
Hey, whatever come into my head, just falls out my mouth.
My reservation is along the lines of thinking that it might be slightly more polite (and effective) to send this individually to those who are forwarding nonsense, rather than to a list. The latter method tends to make people think you may be blaming them for the transgressions of others (which indeed you may be, if this to some extent was an angry respose to an e-mail forwarded by just one person on your list).
There’s also a degree of inconsistency in saying, in effect, “Here’s a broadcast e-mail noting my objection to receiving certain forms of broadcast e-mails.”
But these are minor quibbles. I think you are within the bounds of reasonable behavior.
I think it was a bit terse, but what’s done is done. I like my solution better, though: whenever I get offensive political glurge, I hit “Reply To All” and bomb the sender’s own distribution list with political glurge of the opposite stripe. Good times.
Great line. Perhaps you can use some of mine. I gave my nephews cash in a Christmas card with the message “Buy your own fucking present.” Since they opened them at their grandparents it proved most amusing. If I give a gift voucher my note is always “Ah, the gift that says I couldn’t be bothered thinking about this.”
Oh, the other one that picunurse may like is if people send me stock cards I save them and send them back. So I get a Christmas card that says “To don’t ask” store bought platitude etc “Love picunurse”. Next year you get it back with “To picunurse” store bought platitude etc “Love don’t ask” with the original writing roughly crossed out.
TERSE! That’s the word I’ve been trying to think of! :smack: When I wrote “blunt” (in the OP) I meant “terse.” I hate when I can’t think of the right word. Thanks!
Misnomer, I have the same problem with a few well-meaning people who don’t understand how insane it drives me. I’ve asked politely a few times with very little success.
If someone took offense at it, I’d probably send them a note, “nothing personal, I just am getting too much stuff clogging my inbox.” If they still are too sensitive, heck, at least they won’t bug you anymore.
Point taken, but I only sent it to those people who forward e-mails to me. I didn’t send it to everyone in my address book, just the ‘guilty’ ones. I was mad at only one person at the time, but it’s the cumulative effect of such e-mails that prompted the message: I’m just as sick of angels and teddy bears and ‘why women are better than men’ e-mails as I am the ones that actually insult me.
Nah, I think an original e-mail sent to handful of recipients is different enough from a forwarded e-mail to avoid any charges of inconsistency or hypocrisy. Now, if someone were to forward my e-mail to people in their address book, that would be inconsistent.
If you really want to be super-polite, you could create a new, free email account and say that all personal (useless crap) should be sent there. That’s what I did when I sick of my mom’s angel/prayer/patriotic/send this to 5 friends in the next 10 minutes (including me)…sent to my WORK account. I also have a personal account that they do not know about for the “real” mails.
I ended up doing something similar – my old e-mail addy was getting so clogged with junk mail and forwarded glurge that I created a new e-mail account and only gave the address to a few family members who I knew wouldn’t abuse it. All the forwards and mass mails go to the old account, and the people who send them are none the wiser.
I’ve occasionally replied to Urban Legend e-mails with subtle hints that the sender should research them first. For example, a good friend of mine who lives out of state sent me the warning about attackers hiding under parked cars and the one about hidden needles in gas pumps. In each case I wrote back something like, “that’s really sweet of you to worry about me, but it’s really not necessary. Snopes.com says these reports aren’t true.” She must have started reading Snopes, because I haven’t gotten one of those e-mails from her in years (and yes, she still speaks to me).
I have had to write a few notes of this kind. I do always send them individually; I think it has always been in response to one particular person who had been annoying me recently. And I always include a line to the effect of, “Of course, I will always welcome personal messages from you.”
But I don’t see anything wrong with being terse (but polite), as it helps convey the idea that You Are Serious about it.
LIke everyone else, I got them all, especially a few years ago when the PC boom really was at its peak and many people were new to the net and email. For the urban legend types, I would ‘reply all’ with a nice note saying something like, gee good thing it’s not true as they found on snopes.com and if you go there they have all sorts of interesting other things that aren’t true… Eventually those seemed to diminish. BUT, my (now Ex) mother-in-law would not only send every conceivable piece of crap she receieved, she would also send these ridiculously large attached and/or embedded pictures. At the time I was still on dial-up and using one email address for personal stuff and work stuff. I’d go to check my email to see if I’d received anything from work and would have to wait three and a half days for one of these emails to come through. And half the time she would send double emails cause she’d mess it up or hit the send button twice or who knows what. So then I would be waiting a week for the crap to download! (That might be a slight exaggertion) I had several times before nicely asked her to not send this stuff, explaining just what the problem was and how it was interfering with my work email, etc. Of course she continued to do it anyway until, after going through the waiting for yet another gigantic double email containing pure bullshit, I divorced her son. Well, not exactly. I shot her off this really rude email though, and that finally did the trick. Then I divorced her son.
The problem with being nice is that sometimes people just don’t hear you. The one thing I would say about your email that would have rubbed me the wrong way was the use of the phrase “effective immediately”. But then again, I wouldn’t have sent you any of that crap to begin with!
Wow, I didn’t expect to get so many thoughtful replies…thanks, everyone!
I agree with those of you who mentioned the “effective immediately” wording. I don’t think I’ve ever used that phrase in an e-mail before, actually, except when announcing a new e-mail address or IM name. And Scarlett67 made me realize that I totally should have included something like “Of course, I will always welcome personal messages from you.” :smack:
Oh well. The consensus seems to be that my tone wasn’t too bad, so hopefully that one family member will be the only one to get their knickers in a twist over it. If anyone else has a problem, they’re welcome to talk with me about it…otherwise, the heck with 'em.
)
I try to be careful when composing things like that, but oftentimes the same people who send glurge will be ‘offended’ by a request that they stop. The “sit down and shut up” e-mail I got last night was the straw that broke this camel’s back, though: while I know I could simply delete anything with “fwd” in the subject line, I have a few friends who will actually reference these messages in later conversations and be ‘hurt’ if I haven’t read them. I refuse to continue to be randomly insulted by people I know (and in most cases, love), so I figured it was just best to ask for no more.
I was mad at only one person at the time, but it’s the cumulative effect of such e-mails that prompted the message: I’m just as sick of angels and teddy bears and ‘why women are better than men’ e-mails as I am the ones that actually insult me.