Unwanted emails (a recurring theme)

Once again I am in a discussion with a friend about forwarded emails. This person forwards many very enjoyable ones, but sometimes sends ones that I just don’t care to get. You know the kind, that ‘prove’ that a person, place or thing are all wrong for whatever the purpose is because of all the dastardly reasons listed in the email. Occasionally there’s a grain of truth to these, more often not. It’s easy to check, there are several sites that do this for a living. I use snopes.com, there are others. About three clicks and before you pass along what is pure untruthful drivel, you can see for yourself what has been found out about the particular item. Pretty easy but most people don’t bother, they are so intent on sharing this ‘GASP-did you know this, how dare they’ news. Most of the time when someone sends me one of these I don’t make an issue of it, often I will go to snopes and check it out and then forward them the link to to read for themselves. I hope they get the hint because they are, after all, friends, or they wouldn’t be on my email list and me on theirs. Some do, some haven’t; and I’m not sure if I’ve directly addressed this issue with the person who sent the latest or not. The item in question was all about how Barak Obama is not really an American citizen because of all sorts of alleged problems with his birth certificate. Variations on this theme have been going around since his candidacy was announced, if not before. My first reaction is that ‘don’t you think that those in charge of his campaign, to say nothing of people in the government who pay attention to such things, would have carefully checked this so as to not have any question about the matter?’ Gee, ya think? Another person replied to all on her mailing list that she did not want to receive this sort of thing any more, and I followed with a similar message. This of course led to a discussion on how we can always delete the messages – but that’s not the point here. The point is that to responsibly share emails the sender should not pass along something that isn’t true. The sender should stop and think ‘does this person want to receive this message?’ The sender should know their friends well enough to edit the mailing list. As I put in one of my responses, don’t send everything to everyone. You never know who you might be offending or upsetting.
I (and the other protestors to this particular message) have obviously offended and upset the sender by objecting to getting these emails. She has sent a message that says in short that she won’t be forwarding any more emails since ‘not everyone seems to appreciate when I send something out’ and that ‘free speech and the right to use the delete button seem not to apply…’. Well, yes, there is free speech, but there’s also common sense. There’s also my right to say I don’t want to get things like this. The delete button is indeed an option, and I exercise it often, but as another objector to this item said, you don’t know until you read at least part of the message if you want to do that. I may lose a friend over this, and that would make me sad. But if you can’t tell a friend what you do or don’t want them to tell you, then maybe it wasn’t that strong a bond to begin with.
My messages regarding this:
“…we've been friends for a long time, but I don't wish to receive any more of this sort of thing either. I agree with Gail in that even if you don't like Obama as president, there should be respect for the office. I find it and every thing else of this manner that I have looked up on hoax sites (snopes. com shows several examples of this theme, all false, btw) I have found to be if not entirely false, at least bent to suit someone's hateful rabble-rousing. And has anyone stopped to think that, gee, maybe all this was checked out before the man was even proposed for nomination for the election, because why the hell would anyone leave themselves open for him not being a valid candidate? Just because something is received on the internet does not mean it is true. Please, everyone, check things like this out before spreading more hateful lies. PS, this is not the first message of this type I have sent this week alone. If people would spend the time and effort trying to spread good things that they do spreading this garbage, we'd all be a lot better off.”
And:
“The delete button is often used. However the assumption (and this is not personally directed to you, Carey) that everyone will want to receive every email is not always the right one to make. For that very reason, I personally don't forward to a general group of my email list, I pick and choose. No doubt there are people who don't mind the emails that some of us don't want to get. Send those to those people, and others to the people who want those. Please do not make us the bad guys for speaking up as to what we do or do not wish to receive. That is our choice to make and our right to request. If this annoys you, I'm sorry, likewise any others it may annoy.”
Here’s what I think: no matter how good a friend you are, no matter how well you know the person, don’t assume (makes an ‘ass’ our of ‘u’ and ‘me’), think a bit – and don’t take it personally if someone says they don’t agree – not even the very closest of friends always do. It’s how people are.



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