Soapbox

Excuse me if this seems too direct, but someone has to say it.

I don’t want the Forward that you think is so funny. I spend a few minutes a day weeding though all the jokes that people send me. Some are funny, most are not. I get upwards of 200 messages a day and it takes a lot of time going though the spam and adding jokes to that doesn’t help.

I think it’s rude to bombard people with jokes instead of a well thought out “letter” of a personal nature. Besides, Most likely, I’ve seen it before. Sorry, but most of the jokes going around on email have a life of their own and have been going around and around for years! Same with that funny video, photo, PowerPoint, or whatever. If it is something new, and you want me to see it. Post it someplace (see below) and send me a link.

Don’t send me the chain letters and virus warnings. No, Bill Gates is not going to send money to someone just because this email goes to 1000′s of people. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you if you send me a stupid chain letter about friendship and I don’t send it back to you. I just don’t do that. The virus you heard about via some sort of forwarded email is likely from last century or non-existent. I can take care of my own security just fine thank you. If you get something like that, please go to snopes.com and check it out before you send it to others. Please don’t send it to me either way. If something says “Send this to everyone in your address book” Please, just delete it.

IF you still MUST email me something that was forwarded to you, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE clean it up. Cut and paste is your friend! Cut the funny/important forwarded message into a new message and write something personal to show that it really did come from you. If I see “Fwd: Fwd: Fwd:” in the subject line, it gets deleted. No questions asked. I don’t want to have to work so hard to figure out what you sent me. Also, if you just hit forward on these messages, you are exposing everyone in the chain’s email addresses (also rude). Also forwarding to a bunch of people in the “to” box or the “CC” box exposes all those email addresses. Please use the “bcc” which stands for Blind Copy.

With all the free services out there, you can share all the stuff you would be sending out in email without bombing someone with a large attachment. Also, know this about me, I don’t care how cool you think that big attachment is, I don’t see it. PERIOD. Don’t ask me about it, don’t be mad, I just don’t look at things like that.

A better way of doing that is to use the free services available in this new Web 2.0 space. They are easy to use and as a bonus, the people you send the link to (instead of the video, photo or whatever) do not have to have special software to use it. I know that most people have high speed internet now. But, some of us (like me) don’t have high speed all the time. In my case, I use my BlackBerry handheld as my email when I’m away from a computer. At other times I use it as my access. It connects to the network at 1xRT speed (about double dial up) most of the time. Sometimes it’s faster but it’s still not fast enough to download that BIG video you have. It will, however, do just fine downloading your link. When I do get to a high speed connection, I might just look at it.

Here is a list of free stuff that will help you distribute your “stuff”.

Blogs:

Podcasts:

Videos:

Photos:

Websites:

Just to be clear, I didn’t write this to piss you off. I just want people to think a little about the person on the other end of that email. I don’t like you any less if you do send me something every once in a while. I’m just trying to help. Really I am

-Mike

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