Email is something a lot of us take for granted these days! We received notices about stuff to buy (spam), we received important announcements about stuff (more spam) and we received emails from friends and families (sometimes this is spam as well).
In the time frame of one week, I have received many emails from friends telling me to 'forward to everyone you know' and I have come to a decision. From now on, when I receive one of these 'Forward to everyone you know' or 'Pass this on to five women', or some such nonsense, I will return the email with a disclaimer, which reads as follows.
I want to hear from you, but I won't forward an email that tells me to 'forward or pass it on'. I consider these to be a blight on email. Generally it is a hoax or a false virus warning or it could be a sugary sweet message about a 'phenomenal woman' that should be sent on to other 'phenomenal women'. It could be a political or religious message. I know a lot of people and they don't all have the same political views or belong to the same religion and I refuse to subject them to a message that may offend them.
I don't want to read that if I don't send this on, I am going to suffer the consequences. So don't send me any of those messages either. The only consequences here will be me using the Delete button. While I am at it, I will also delete any message that has no information in the email, but has an envelope attached. These are usually, but not always, from AOL users. Some web email programs send forwards this way. Before I stopped opening them, I received some that had as many as seven or eight envelopes that had to be opened before I could see the actual message, which was usually not worth all of the effort involved to get to the message.
Someone else made a really nice little swf file that really expresses just how I feel. You can see the file here:
Please, if you absolutely think you have 'to forward to everyone you know', at least use the BCC field when adding all those addresses!