January 28, 2004
Email Stupidity
That’s it! I’ve had one stupid forward too many and I must speak out about it! There are only a few basic things to remember regarding email forwards and reply alls… Remember them, my friends, and you will save yourself (and others) from a lot of wasted time.
What is the likelihood of Bill Gates sending you $10,000 for forwarding an email? Honestly? Do you think if he really guaranteed to send money to everyone who forwarded his email, he’d have any fortune left? Would YOU ever do it? Of course not.
There is no emailing tracking system in existence. So after you forward something to 20 of your friends, do NOT expect the arrival of a great mp3, thousands of dollars being sent to you, or my old non committal favourite “something cool” happening. You’re willing to annoy your friends by forwarding on a crap poem, joke or picture on the off chance that “something cool” happens, when you have no idea what that might be? Has it ever worked before? No? Think
Call me heartless, but after receiving the same ‘tear-jerker’ email over and over and over again, I don’t really give a flying fuck about “Kyle”, the nerd who became cool after some idiot picked up his books. I don’t need to hear about him joining the football team and becoming good looking and thus proving his worth. As moving as it is, the story of the teacher\nun who made the kids in her class write down good things about each other and they all carry the lists on them and one dies and everyone cries does NOT need to be forwarded around every three months. Badly written poems that attempt to rip out your heartstrings and use them to string up a violin to play the worlds saddest song are not necessarily the best thing to forward around to every man and his dog.
You have not won anything. And you will not win anything else by forwarding an email onto 50,000 of your friends.
Messages like “Forward this to your friends, and show them that you still love and remember them” are bullshit. If you really cared about them, you’d ring them, or send a proper email actually ASKING after them and seeing how they’re going. Forwarding a picture of a teddy bear with a crap soppy four line poem underneath it to 78,000 of your friends will not remind every single one of them how much you care, it will prove you’re a lazy sod who sends on irritating emails.
Reply alls can be hilarious, if done between people who know each other and are bored stiff. They can also be bloody annoying if some idiots you don’t know keep sending you emails containing unfunny one liners in an attempt to let a hell of a lot of people they don’t know that they are, indeed, the funniest human beings on the planet. So in order to not become that wanna-be-hilarious wanker suffering from a chronic case of ‘Other People Deserve to Love Me Too’ syndrome, try to keep reply alls between friends…
However, if you’ve received an email that is clever, very very funny, or genuinely thought provoking - forward it on! Perhaps it’s just that the golden age of email forwards is over for me. Remember when you first started working in an office job, and you got all these new and exciting and funny emails?! They were the best ever! How we chortled into our mugs of hot Milo on morning breaks as we discussed the hilarity that was ensuing in our inboxes. But after four years, there’s not much that hasn’t been seen already, and most stuff is, quite frankly, utter shite. It’s terribly sad.
So I beg of you - use common sense. Forward on FUNNY stuff. If you are unsure of what this is, spend your weekends working on developing a wry sense of humour. Don’t visit too many US based ‘humor’ sites though - it’s all cock and tit jokes - which can have their moments, but generally don’t.
Remember - quality emails only. Let’s stop the shite humour from insidiously spreading across the world through our forward-happy habits, like some manic plague of gonorrhoea. Thank you.
— Filed under Articles On Various Topics