“Forwarded Emails”

I enjoy getting jokes, letters, and stories forwarded to me. I take them for what they are. Gossip. Probably not true, but fun to read and laugh at.

I have a friend that sends me a cartoon almost every day. It’s not political, religious, or dirty, just funny. And it’s great to get it. It’s about some dog who seems to run everyone’s lives and is smarter than all the humans put together.

I do have a couple of bones to pick with people who forward emails. First – why, if they think that it is good enough to send to everyone they know, can’t they clean it up a bit. I really don’t want to have to scroll down through hundreds of forwarded addresses to get to the meat of the matter. It takes about 10 seconds to delete all those, and also helps with some privacy issues.

Second, and this is the big one, I hate the way many heap guilt. “Send this on to 10 people you know or someone will die in India.” “Please don’t break the chain; this has been around the world ten times.” That one is great, because the chances are that if I sent it to a friend in Ohio, it could travel through Hong Kong, India, Europe, and a little building west of Washington DC before it got here. I just forwarded on touching email about soldiers in combat. It demanded that I forward it both at the beginning and the end. I deleted those requests, and then forwarded it.

So, I make it a point of removing all the “please forward” lines. If people think it’s good enough they will forward it on their own. If they don’t, so be it.

JVH