My sister in law is one of those people you wish had never been unleashed on a computer. She is the only person I know who:
ALWAYS TYPES IN CAPS. REALLY FUCKING IRRITATING.
Uses no punctuation even though she is university educated, works in admin and speaks three languages.
Sends oversized attachments. When we were on dial-up it would sometimes take 20 minutes to download her missives, which turn out to be crap anyway.
Sends them two, three, four times. Not just a one-off or occasional lapse but more often than not. Guaranteed to go down like a fart in a spacesuit when you consider (3).
The attachments usually consist of stupid cartoons (similar to old-fashioned British seaside postcards) featuring men with comical erections, women with oversized boobs… you get the picture. Definitely not work or even home safe, especially when the easily-shocked aged relatives or impressionable young children are around.
The one thing I did nip in the bud was the spate of god-bothering messages. I sent a polite but firm note saying I did not share these beliefs and to please keep me off her list for future mailings of this nature.
But if you think it couldn’t get worse, here is the final straw which leaves me speechless.
She forwards spam. WTFFFFFFF?
The first six pale into insignificance now.
Where do you even start with someone who is so clueless?
On the style question, I haven’t said anything to her. When I do reply to her messages, which is rare, I make a point of typing in the conventional way, using punctuation, but this is clearly far too subtle for her to get any sort of hint.
I did challenge the religious spam and that mostly stopped. I still get some trite shite that is not overtly religious but might as well be, though.
I think I did also say something about the cartoons, but those still appear once in a while.
My father did this for a while. Forwarding me the inane jokes and Shockwave Flash files his friends would send him, and whatever ‘Daily Inspirational’ messages he’d happen to get. I politely told him that I’d rather he didn’t forward those things to me, and he stopped for the most part.
You have tried a similar approach with the religious material, but you may want to mention something similar to her abotu the rest. If it continues, you can explain you don’t wish to receive those cartoons or the advertisement email because you don’t want to risk a computer virus or risk being placed on a commercial e-mailing list.
If that doesn’t work, you can drop the hint that if it continues, for the safety of your computer you may have to start blocking messages from her address.
Or you could go the funny route and tell her ’ OMG! I think some virus has totally got control of your machine! It’s been forwarding me all this stupid spam! Let me know when you take care of it, and I’ll unblock your email address!’
Well, I posted this to get it off my chest more than anything, and didn’t really expect people to have anything to suggest that I hadn’t yet thought of. Blocking her address is a real option because I rarely get messages from her that merit a reply. I already delete the obvious ‘forwards’ without opening them. But this is a useful tip and I will be employing it. Thanks CandidGamera.
For the record, she’s my husband’s sister, and although we’re not soulmates I get on pretty well with her and admire many things about her. I just wish no one had ever introduced her to the delights of e-mail.
My 89 year-old grandfather sends me (and the rest of his address book) about 20 emails a week. 1 in 20 might be a quick note written in ALL CAPS to see how I & the mrs. are doing. The rest are about 1/3 religious glurge and 2/3 dirty jokes (I’m not kidding).
But, I cut him some slack. He’s 89 frickin’ years old. If he enjoys spending the day in the library forwarding dumb blonde jokes to all his grandkids, more power to him. It’s a pain to go through and delete all his emails every day – but I think I’ll miss them the day when they stop.
However, your sister in law is young enough to know better.
Well, just make sure to stay in contact with her through other means… And on the off-chance she sends something worthwhile or relevant, and asks you about it, you can honestly say that you didn’t notice it because of all the other fluff.
And there are different methods of blocking … Outlook Express will download the message, and then delete it if the sender is blocked, if I understand it correctly… so the big hulking attachments may still tie up some time.
You might want to try sending a note to everyone on your list (even though she is the only target) telling them you have limited space on your e-mail account, so don’t attach anything unless it has a specific purpose, like a recipe or something you’ve actually requested. That way, she won’t be offended, and no one else will be tempted to send a six-gagillion byte graphic (I have people who do this to me, but not too often – it makes me nuts).
As far as her typing skills, I think you’re stuck with that. Some people just refuse to use lower case. I don’t know how they do it…stuff doesn’t even FEEL right when I’m typing in all caps.
My boss uses all caps all the time. I’m not going to explain to him that it appears as if he is yelling and it’s hard to read. I have enough trouble explaining things like “click and drag” and changing the ink cartridge in his machine.
Slight nitpick: she just said spacesuit, she didn’t say anything about whether the spacesuit was in space. Perhaps the fart in question was emitted when an astronaut was training in the spacesuit on Earth.
Update: she is now back in the office (that’s the only place she uses the net, it seems) and the torrent has been unleashed, with the backlog of spam from the weekend.
I have acted! I did exactly what CandidGamera advised, using a commiserating tone about us being in it together as victims of spam and computer viruses.
I bet she replies in an injured tone, saying “it’s not a virus, I forwarded them to you thinking you might be interested”.
Took my dad a little while, but he did learn. I told him once, he shrugged it off with an “Eh, it’s easier to read.” so I just let him be. He heard the same thing from a number of sources over a couple of years, and finally came around.
If she hears it from enough people she might change her mind too.
No, it’s not easier to read. If it were easier to read, newspapers, books and magazines wouldn’t bother to use lower case.
There’s a couple from my church who send out the email updates on people who are sick, or getting better, and trying to get people to sign up to make meals for the homebound, and they do this, too. All caps and a couple of periods between thoughts:
JANE SMITH FELL AND BROKE HER HIP, IN THE HOSPITAL…JOHN BROWN HOME AND DOING BETTER…MARY WHITE DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER, PLEASE SIGN UP TO MAKE MEALS FOR THE FAMILY…DAVE JONES IN A CAR ACCIDENT, WIFE NEEDS RIDE TO DIALYSIS ON TUESDAY, CALL IF YOU CAN HELP…
It’s incredibly annoying to read, and if they’d break it up with between each person’s comment, it’d be so much easier to read and decipher.
They’re intelligent, well-educated people, and the emails go to probably a couple of hundred fellow church members. They drive me up the wall, and I know I’m not the only one.
:eek: Yikes! The Sis-in-law is spam spreader. I think one of the last things you’d want to do is send her an message with your personal distribution list on it. Even if she didn’t purposefully use the list she might inadvertantly spread it.
Don’t most mail programs have a distribution list function, so the recipient can see they were mailed from a list but can’t see anyone else’s name from the list? I know Pegasus Mail (my mailer of choice) does, and I believe Eudora does, also. Not sure about Outlook or Outlook Express, since I’ve never used them
