newest entry 2003-04-26 6:06 a.m.


What do you do when you keep getting spammed, not by strangers with penile enlargement schemes but by your friends? I have a friend, (who as far as I know does not read this blog) from whom I get at least ten, but usually more, e-mails a day. Never personal, always forwards, never anything I'm interested in--a martial arts workshop in Connecticut, a cat rescue announcement for people in South Jersey, etc.

And among the ten or twenty emails are usually a few bogus petitions, fake "missing child" emails, and other such hoaxes.

At first I responded to the hoaxes by sending her links to Snopes articles. That's usually enough for most people. After that they think, "Hmm, maybe this e-mail announcement is a hoax, too. Perhaps I should research its veracity before sending!"

But not this person. I think I've received the Penny Brown e-mail from her three times over the past few years. And things like that make me discredit everything she sends, so I usually end up deleting anything with her name on it.

Now, e-mail junk is not like regular junk mail. It doesn't take up space (unless you've got web-based mail, in which case, you'd have a legitimate gripe ). So why do I find her constant e-mailing annoying?

Is it because it's so impersonal? Is it because she stubbornly refuses to believe that many of these emails are fake, or at the very least misdirected? Is it because it seems a little...I dunno...like a cry for help or something?

In any case, I haven't asked her to take my name off her list, because I can't justify possibly hurting her feelings over something that is merely annoying to me.

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