I have been a member of a number of e-mail discussion lists, on a variety of topics, for many years now. This means, of course, that I get a lot of e-mail each day, and I’m accustomed to the large volume.
One thing that never seems to change on these lists is the occasional person — usually somebody you’ve never seen post to the list before — who posts a message to a list, frantic to a lesser or greater degree, begging/demanding to be removed from the list because … they got a lot of e-mail. In the most recent instance of this, somebody posted an unsubscribe request and said, “When I got home today I had 25 e-mails!”(Wow, 25?)
Now, the frantic unsubscribe requests were understandable when I was subscribing to a list for consensual erotic spanking enthusiasts. Nearly 100% of those requests came from men with AOL addresses, and it was pretty clear that these AOLers must have thought they were signing up for a chat room or something, and panicked when spanking-related e-mails started showing up in their inboxes where wifey might see them.
It’s the unsubscribe requests citing “too much mail” that really puzzle me, especially when the number is so low. What were these people expecting when they signed up? Were they thinking they would only receive e-mail replying to their own posts? I don’t get how they could think that, even if they’re raw Internet noobs. I mean, I was a raw Internet noob myself once, and never made that mistake. Every e-mail discussion list I’ve been a part of has unambiguously explained up front that it’s an “e-mail discussion list”, and specifically stated that when I joined the list I would start receiving e-mails from other members. Most have also given some indication as to how much e-mail I could expect each day.
So I just don’t get why these people are surprised. What were they expecting?