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Thursday, July 03, 2008

How do I put this . . .?

I'm getting really sick of receiving emails laden with polictical or social commentary favoring some particular ideology. I'm searching for a nice way to tell people that I can't stand getting these emails. I'm trying to walk the thin line of being nice but getting my point accross. Here is a response I sent off recently. What do you think?

Dear [name withheld],

I wanted to let you know that I love you and that I appreciate that you are thinking of me when you send me these emails. However, I'd like to offer you some rules of thumb that I ask you to consider when you forward emails in the future.

Good rule of thumb #1: Don't send politically-charged email forwards or those encouraging a particular (extreme) ideology. They are, as in the case of this email you just forwarded, almost always patently wrong or grossly misrepresentative of fact.

Good rule of thumb #2: If you aren't absolutely certain of an intended recipient's political/social/economic ideology, don't send them emails with polical/social/economic/policy commentary. Even if the emails aren't plainly false, they will undoubtedly irritate those people in your contacts list who do not share your same ideology.

Good rule of thumb #3: If you can't resist the urge to forward these kind of email messages, at least check out the veracity of their claims by visiting snopes.com or some other reputable website. In this case, you could have found out that the email you just sent is not true. http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp. I found this article by going to snopes.com and searching for "Alexander Tyler"

Good rule of thumb #4: If you can't resist the urge to send these kind of email forwards, at least do me the favor of putting all of the email addresses (or my email address at the very least) in the "Bcc:" field rather than the "To:" field of the email. Putting email addresses in the Bcc: field masks the email addresses of all the recipients listed in the Bcc field. This will ensure that you don't disseminate my email address to others in your contacts list. After all, if I didn't want to receive this email, I don't think I want my email address going to people who may have enjoyed your email forward.

Yours truly,

Brad
Here's to resisting the urge to just delete the offending messages we get and, instead, trying to do something about them.

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