Many friends, who have sent me emails after my husband's death, have (as my Jewish friends would say) performed a mitzvah. They have kept me laughing. However, many who blindly forward are hardly 'friends' though they are the first to forward messages labeling themselves so. Most people have, at some time or other, received "You were sent this on best friend's day', or 'Girlfriend's Day' or something similar. It is often accompanied by a 'forward to endless people in the next 30 seconds and something surprising and wonderful will happen to you'. I'll never know what I have missed.
In our busy lives, it makes me wonder at the dull lives these people must have that t hey have so much time to waste. Sometimes the forwards are beautiful pictures but when they are accompanied by religious edicts, they lose their charm for me. It finally dawned on me they have become as unwelcome as telemarketers and arrive just as intrusive.
If any of you have ever received a thank you for your contributions in the past (from a political candidate you would choose your own death in preference to their election) you might experience the same feelings when a 'friend' sends you a forward that insults every belief you hold. My 'friends' all know my political stance and would not clutter the web with pages and pages of other people's addresses and forwarded messages that sent only once would be annoying but repeated many times is dangerous to my blood pressure.
The upshot of this rant is the real question. How do you stop this flow without revealing the offensive thoughts cluttering your mind? It seems like the dilemma of the salt machine from the old fable, I use a mail program which presorts my mail into folders. This allows me to take a quick glance that there may actually be something worth reading before I dump it. It also makes me refine my definition of 'friend'.
In our busy lives, it makes me wonder at the dull lives these people must have that t hey have so much time to waste. Sometimes the forwards are beautiful pictures but when they are accompanied by religious edicts, they lose their charm for me. It finally dawned on me they have become as unwelcome as telemarketers and arrive just as intrusive.
If any of you have ever received a thank you for your contributions in the past (from a political candidate you would choose your own death in preference to their election) you might experience the same feelings when a 'friend' sends you a forward that insults every belief you hold. My 'friends' all know my political stance and would not clutter the web with pages and pages of other people's addresses and forwarded messages that sent only once would be annoying but repeated many times is dangerous to my blood pressure.
The upshot of this rant is the real question. How do you stop this flow without revealing the offensive thoughts cluttering your mind? It seems like the dilemma of the salt machine from the old fable, I use a mail program which presorts my mail into folders. This allows me to take a quick glance that there may actually be something worth reading before I dump it. It also makes me refine my definition of 'friend'.
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