I have a confession to make: there are thirteen hundred and something unread messages in my inbox. Maybe at the time that I post this it will have reached fourteen hundred and something. I don’t even know how many messages there are if I counted the ones I’ve already read. I find the whole thing overwhelming. I know it’s a sign of my own poor organizational skills. To be fair, I check the ones from people I know. I read those and sometimes keep the trail around to reread and laugh about later. The unreads are usually from the following entities:
Amazon, Barack Obama, Monster, Zappos, Borders, Sephora, eBags and anyone else I’ve checked out donated to, signed the online petition for, or ordered material goods from that required my email address. I either did not uncheck the “Please send me every thought and rambling about what is going on with your deals, political gripes, begging disguised as a guilt trip over donating to a worthy cause, and other offers, or I never clicked the itty bitty hyperlink to unsubscribe on the bottom of the email messages I have received.
My email account is the virtual equivalent to the houses on that show Hoarders. Have you seen this? It’s one of those shows I’ve heard about but never sat down to watch, until I had a week away from home and wireless internet access. I streamed two episodes back to back over my laptop. I streamed another one the other day, while folding laundry. These shows inspire me to clean up, organize and get rid of things I don’t use or need. The living conditions are so unbelievable and disgusting, and yet you cannot bring yourself to look away. You want to see this poor person twitch and agonize over getting rid of a thousand empty Pepsi bottles or dusty and broken picture frames and unfinished needlepoint projects. You can’t help but imagine the smells when the cleaning crew unearths a bathroom or a flattened, dearly departed animal. You can’t make sense of how someone could turn their home into a dumpster and a toilet simultaneously.
I want to criticize these people from my perch on the watching end of the screen, but at the same time, I know I will hold on to something a little longer than necessary if I think there’s a chance I will use it in the future. I don’t want to feel regret when I later look for that thing and realize that it’s gone because I donated it. I know it’s stupid and things are replaceable if I need them later--trust me, I’m working on it. When you have too many things, it becomes obvious because suddenly you find yourself low on space and you also find it harder and harder to get the things you need out from under the things you don’t. It’s sort of that way with email messages, except you can use the handy dandy search function if things get too dire. You also don’t run out of space these days. Gigabytes are so cheap that you can practically use as many as you want, not as many as you need. I know I will do a mass purge at some point. Look into my inbox and you’ll know I’m a hypocrite for pointing the finger at hoarders. There are a few messages I probably need to set aside in folders but the rest can go. I’ve done it several times before, and the last time I took a screenshot of the blissfully immaculate inbox and sent it to my husband. Then the inbox stays manageable for awhile, then the mail piles up again, and it just becomes too much of a pain. Plus, email is deceiving. You might have 15086 messages, but your page only displays the latest ones, in manageable byte sized chunks (please kick me for the pun, I richly deserve it), so you don’t have a true concept of what you’re amassing. There are consequences if you have accumulated 6000 teapots, or newspapers, or cats. There are no major consequences if you have 6000 messages in your inbox. No one really cares. You close the window of your email account and it’s out of sight. A show about someone cleaning up the inbox of an email account wouldn’t yield nearly as many viewers as “Hoarders.” It just doesn’t have the same punch. It is completely on you to manage your pile of email without a psychologist or cleaning crew to stand over your shoulder and assist you. It is completely on you, and that, my friends*, is too much pressure.
*Who am I, John McCain?
Showing posts with label email. Show all posts
Showing posts with label email. Show all posts
12.22.2009
7.15.2008
Worm Holes
Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. It’s true…don’t even believe everything written in this blog. Sure, I put things out there like truth, but don’t be fooled; sometimes I throw in a little extra to keep you reading.
When I refer to “the internet” I'm also talking about the email messages you receive from friends and family members. We all know at least one person who makes you hate opening anything they send because you just know you'd be better off skipping it entirely. The one who likes to forward everything in their inbox to the rest of the world? Yeah, that person. Sometimes I think these people have their mail automatically set up to do this since they are so prolific with their forwarded messages. Sometimes you receive a joke, sometimes you get a series of funny pictures and sometimes it’s false information, passed off as fact.
I had a coworker who liked to do this. Most of her messages involved prayers (which had to be passed on to 10 friends or else you’d be doomed to the depths of hell) but she also liked to send “true" stories that contained one too many coincidences and a neatly packaged conclusion. One day, when she sent me a story that wrapped up a little too cleanly, I decided to get a second opinion.
As expected, snopes confirmed my suspicions that the entire message about September 11th and the firefighter who perished after saving a pregnant woman in the World Trade Center was a lie (naturally, the imaginary baby that was born months later, was named after this heroic fictional firefighter). I didn’t have the heart to tell my coworker that the "true story" was indeed not true. We were just a few years removed and not far from the Pentagon and I wasn’t going to be the bad guy.
Yes, that’s usually how it goes, the one trying to offer the truth is the bad guy. Usually you get a response like, “Thanks, I didn’t know,” or “Oh, okay.” and even though the response is neutral, you just know the sender was seething as those words were typed. And if you thought you were doing a service to everyone by hitting “reply all,” then congratulations, you just succeeded in making the sender look like a dumb ass in front of his or her entire distro list.
Sometimes you have to weigh the message you’re sending against the reaction you’ll get. I'll forgive the harmless stuff(“The Statue of Liberty is black, y’all!”) or sappy crap, but if your message is alarmist in nature, I will call you on it.
Case in point—one of my friends sent a message about someone who had itchy breasts and upon visiting a doctor, discovered worms living in holes around the areola. And then, like any authentic message, there were pictures to prove it! Eee-yew, I thought as I clicked the attached photo. When I returned from the bathroom*, I re-read the story, analyzing it for truth. Usually tales like these involve some exotic location, as if something so horrendous would never happen locally. In this example, it was from the bra the person was wearing during a recent trip to South America. Ding-ding-ding! This was another job for snopes.
If you guessed that it was another untruth, good job. The people sending these things should know better. They’re usually well-meaning types who just didn't pause to long enough to question the original message (undoubtedly forwarded to them by some other well-intentioned soul). If you recognize that you might be one of those people, next time you get the urge to hit "forward" in your attempt to save the rest of us, ask yourself: Is this just a little too terrible (or too good to be true) to believe? If you have any doubt at all, check snopes (or press "delete"). In doing so, you have spared us from the gory photoshopped images of breasts riddled with worm holes. Thank you!
I sent the myth busting link to my friend (but I did not “Reply All”), and when she sent back an “Okay, thanks,” I could feel the chill. Minutes later, she replied to everyone else that had been burdened with the “Breast Holes” email message, explaining that it wasn’t true.
And then...I never heard from her again.*
*not true
When I refer to “the internet” I'm also talking about the email messages you receive from friends and family members. We all know at least one person who makes you hate opening anything they send because you just know you'd be better off skipping it entirely. The one who likes to forward everything in their inbox to the rest of the world? Yeah, that person. Sometimes I think these people have their mail automatically set up to do this since they are so prolific with their forwarded messages. Sometimes you receive a joke, sometimes you get a series of funny pictures and sometimes it’s false information, passed off as fact.
I had a coworker who liked to do this. Most of her messages involved prayers (which had to be passed on to 10 friends or else you’d be doomed to the depths of hell) but she also liked to send “true" stories that contained one too many coincidences and a neatly packaged conclusion. One day, when she sent me a story that wrapped up a little too cleanly, I decided to get a second opinion.
As expected, snopes confirmed my suspicions that the entire message about September 11th and the firefighter who perished after saving a pregnant woman in the World Trade Center was a lie (naturally, the imaginary baby that was born months later, was named after this heroic fictional firefighter). I didn’t have the heart to tell my coworker that the "true story" was indeed not true. We were just a few years removed and not far from the Pentagon and I wasn’t going to be the bad guy.
Yes, that’s usually how it goes, the one trying to offer the truth is the bad guy. Usually you get a response like, “Thanks, I didn’t know,” or “Oh, okay.” and even though the response is neutral, you just know the sender was seething as those words were typed. And if you thought you were doing a service to everyone by hitting “reply all,” then congratulations, you just succeeded in making the sender look like a dumb ass in front of his or her entire distro list.
Sometimes you have to weigh the message you’re sending against the reaction you’ll get. I'll forgive the harmless stuff(“The Statue of Liberty is black, y’all!”) or sappy crap, but if your message is alarmist in nature, I will call you on it.
Case in point—one of my friends sent a message about someone who had itchy breasts and upon visiting a doctor, discovered worms living in holes around the areola. And then, like any authentic message, there were pictures to prove it! Eee-yew, I thought as I clicked the attached photo. When I returned from the bathroom*, I re-read the story, analyzing it for truth. Usually tales like these involve some exotic location, as if something so horrendous would never happen locally. In this example, it was from the bra the person was wearing during a recent trip to South America. Ding-ding-ding! This was another job for snopes.
If you guessed that it was another untruth, good job. The people sending these things should know better. They’re usually well-meaning types who just didn't pause to long enough to question the original message (undoubtedly forwarded to them by some other well-intentioned soul). If you recognize that you might be one of those people, next time you get the urge to hit "forward" in your attempt to save the rest of us, ask yourself: Is this just a little too terrible (or too good to be true) to believe? If you have any doubt at all, check snopes (or press "delete"). In doing so, you have spared us from the gory photoshopped images of breasts riddled with worm holes. Thank you!
I sent the myth busting link to my friend (but I did not “Reply All”), and when she sent back an “Okay, thanks,” I could feel the chill. Minutes later, she replied to everyone else that had been burdened with the “Breast Holes” email message, explaining that it wasn’t true.
And then...I never heard from her again.*
*not true
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