I wish someone out there would invent a 'Forward Quota Enforcer'. I will explain the concept behind this great idea. See I have a Forward Quota. Definition: The limit put on the amount of forwards that can be deposited in my inbox by any one person. Ever!
So far, so good. The problem I now face is ensuring that this quota is observed.
I have given everybody on my contact list a maximum of 5. That's it! That is as many forwards as I can bear. How long it takes to use them up is completely in their hands. For some it takes 1 month, others 4 years. I'm not a total rasa. I'm flexible with time frame. A good friend of mine, whom I love dearly and would give up organs for if she needed them, reached and exceed her quota in one sitting! I opened my mail and there they were. 7 forwards sent in quick succession. 11.04am, 11.07am, 11.13am....... I felt the stamina for life drain right out of my body. Only a cappuccino and an avocado could bring it back. Yeah, yeah asubuhi asubuhi. That's how I sustain myself. I still cherish and appreciate her, but she needs to change her ways. Soon. Tafadhali switi.
There are people out there who have never come across a forward that they felt I needed to receive. I have thought of sending them a message of appreciation, but then I realized it might become a forward so I let it go.
I cannot figure out what the novelty is with forwards. Most of them are cheesy, unoriginal and long. They are usually buried under masses of email addresses and the names of other innocent souls that have gone before me, subjected to the same affliction. I often stop scrolling down in search of the object of my misery and pause to look at their names (ok, to rest my fingers for a bit). I wonder if Mike Omondi or Josphat Kiptoo dislike forwards as much as I do. Did they open this one? Did they forward it? What is their relationship with the forwarding culprit? Such things.
When this starts to get boring I continue to the bottom of the page. Yap, I skip the forward itself and go further down in search of the deal breaker (at least for me it is). You know, the "If you do not send this to 375 people in 6 minutes your knees will grow hair...." crap that has become the standard with forwards. Should the forward before me possess such a clause, I scroll a little further and click Delete. At that point it does not matter what the forward was about. The moment it threatens to destroy my life, should I not transmit it to everybody I know, it has to go. How can one justify cursing me with an unhappy, loveless, bad luck infested life (with hairy knees), simply because I choose not to send those cushy puppies and dainty butterflies along to my people? I can only imagine the replies I would get from my siblings. I have been harshly reprimanded for lesser evils.
Back to my Quota Enforcer. This would be a program that keeps a tally of the number of forwards I have received from every contact in my address book. The foward would appear in my inbox as 2 of 5 or 3 of 5. Every time it would send a message to the sender saying something like, "You have used 3 of the 5 forwards permitted by this recipient". Once the quota is exceeded a message proclaiming so would be sent to the culprit. Maybe "Cease and Desist with immediate effect, all further forwarding", or something to that effect. Here is the kicker, and the reason I know I am on the verge of a breakthrough. Should a person choose to continue to send forwards, not only would they be blocked, but the same forward will be sent back to the sender as many times as the people to whom it was originally sent. If they had forwarded it to 10 people, then "You are my friend forever" will appear in their inbox 10 times. Let’s see how much forwarding happens after that!
In the meantime, since I'm bila knowledge as to how to design such a program, I am sending out a plea. If you feel it is absolutely necessary that you forward a forward (and trust me it is not), here are a few things you should do.
- Delete the Fwd: from the subject line. It is the least you can do. Sending a Fwd:FWd:Fwd: is forward overkill.
- Delete the clusters of names and emails before the message. Those things just increase the size of the email and I know that's where those strangers who send forwards get email addresses from.
- Delete the strange symbols and signs before every sentence in the forward. They are annoying and make reading how "my love radiates like the rays of the sun on a cloudy day" more difficult.
- While you at it, delete the forward.
4 comments:
Roho safi. Most of the time I delete forwards, the good thing is that not too many people send them to me. Bad news is my mum is one of them, and she was shocked and somewhat appalled when I told her that I delete most of them. As you said, most of them are cheesy, unoriginal (forward this email so AOL/Microsoft can pay for my treatment), chain letters and pics that I don't need.
The only problem with a spam blocker is that it would block all the person's mail.I dont know if there is one that blocks out mails with images so if a forward with images comes in it is deleted immediately.
A complicated issue if you still want to get real mail from those people once in a while.
Ah, a kindred spirit! Like Aco, I delete forwards bila shame. I tell people that send them to me not to bother, since I will just delete them. A solution to this is to have the default setting of your spam blocker to block everything except emails that meet your criteria. Then you can have people that write to you follow those criteria. Chances are, people being so lazy as to not massage the messages as you describe in the last paragraph, they will continue sending forwards which will automatically be relegated to /dev/null. And if they seriously want to write to you, then they should follow your strict guidelines. I'm with you: Down With Forwards!
I cannot stand them! When they come from like a really close rela I suck it up and open the damn thing. Some people I know add their little salaams to the top of it. If it does all the things I have described, gone!
I second that, Down with Forwards!
I wish all my family, friends and acquaintances felt this way, I'm the only one besides practically internet strangers who cannot stand any chain email forwards, in any way, shape, or form. How the heck do so many people ignore their friends and ignore their debunks, protests and cautions against sending this crap, and just keep sending crap? And when all they send is fwd crud, it really makes one go looking elsewhere for friends. I've got my own little self-therapy space on the net where I post my screaming and ranting fits every time some dumbunny sends me one of those stupid friendship or "God will love you if you pass this on!" chain emails. At least with urban legends I can simply go to snopes.com, get the debunking url and reply to the offending forwarder with the debunk and the url. But all the other gunk that's meant to make you feel sooooooo terribly - (any extreme emotion) enough to pass the fwd along, only makes me feel one extreme emotion - mad as hex at the person who sent it to me! Secondary emotions are: insulted that they couldn't take the time to send me a real email, and because they thought I was stupid enough to want and believe in this crud. Embarrassed that my friends are such idiots and by forwarding a chain they've just advertised that loud and clear to heck knows how many other people besides me. Infuriated that they allow themselves to get manipulated by some anonymous coward who told them they were heartless and would have no friends and no god if they delete a lousy chain email. Boiling over whenever one of these forwarders gets upset whenever I set the record straight.
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