Thursday, January 08, 2009

i hate forwarded emails

it's no secret that i hate spam email.

every time i receive anything with a subject line like "FWD: RE: fwd: re: ANIMAL CRUELTY - FORWARD THIS IF YOU HAVE A HEART!!!!!", i check the little box next to it and head straight for "delete". i hate spam email. i hate the way my inbox clogs up with rubbish. i hate that i have to spend a couple of minutes a day ridding myself of them.

ok fine some of them are automatically generated by spam-creating companies that bought my contact information off some other party, or whatever, but what really gets on my nerves is forwarded emails from...my friends.

i'm sorry, people. my eternal loathing for forwards is non-specific. i delete pretty much every single forwarded email regardless of its content. that means it goes into the trash whether it's a meaningful poem by a kid dying of leukaemia or a false claim that bill gates will give me USD 0.04 for every email sent.

speaking of false claims, the main reason why i get most annoyed by spam email sent by my friends is because you guys are intelligent and educated. you should be the LAST people on earth to be duped into flooding your friends' inboxes with fake or misinterpreted content.

when you receive a thought-provoking (i was gonna use the word "provocative" but that wouldn't sound right) email from your mother or cousin or some long lost friend from primary school that you can't even remember, take some time to google the content or double check it with snopes.com before you "forward to all" and "send".

if it turns out to be bullocks, then for goodness' sake don't forward it!

instead, do what i do and give the sender a polite reply informing them of the false information and advise them to join the quest in ridding the world of spam email.

trust me, you would have helped make the web a better place.

but if it is a genuine plea for donations (backed up by info from reliable sources, please!) and bill gates really has decided to give money away to not-very-needy people, then by all means spread the love!

most of the time, however, the stuff written in forwarded emails is rubbish.

be a man, do the right thing, and stop the proliferation of junk email.

and don't send me forwarded emails. kthxbai.

lishun at 6:00 PM

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