I've Gotta Get a Message to You

Today I received another of what I call "guilt email" messages. You've probably received these before... they start off with a story - it could be a cute, religious, patriotic, medical or philosophical story, or sometimes it is all of the above. The story is meant to encourage, inspire or just entertain, and at the end of the story the receiver is bidden to forward the message to others, usually with a directive like "if you care about (whatever) forward this email to 10 friends...". And it's that "if" that bothers me the most. Because the message will state something like "if you really care/believe/whatever" with the implication that if you don't forward the message, you are uncaring, insensitive or don't really love God/Jesus/Mom/your country/your friends/cute little animals. Now I believe in Jesus, I like my country and I care about my friends, but my faith in Jesus, my feelings for my cat, and my concerns for my friends have nothing to do with whether or not I forward an email. In fact, I generally don't forward email messages. Working in the computer industry I'm aware that the volume of email on the Internet is tremendous, and that's primarily because of spam, but I don't think I need to add to it by forwarding every cute joke I receive from friends. And emails with attachments are even worse, using more Internet bandwidth and taking up more space on your hard drive. So usually don't forward email stories/jokes, but in spite of what these messages imply, that doesn't make me a bad or insensitive person for not wanting to clutter the Internet with forwarded email. I also don't like being someone who fills up my friends' mailboxes with alot of email - if my friends are anything like me, they already get alot of email, and don't always have time to read what they've already received. But I've noticed that sometimes, when someone realizes I didn't forward their email, their reaction indicates some degree of surprise and/or disappointment. Surprise that I didn't just forward the message along (like they did) and disappointment in me for not forwarding something they sent to me. Hey, it's nothing personal... I still like you, your kids and and your dog - I'm just trying to do my part to reduce email.

Use the "delete" button