Family Forwards - Lovable Spam?
I get spammed by my family and friends and despite my pleas for them to smother their I gotta share this emotion they continue to send me forwards.
And unlike trashy get a bigger penis or double your breasts spams, family forwards are very boring. Most forwards range from - Pass this email along to all the sisters you love dearly and mail it back to the recipient causing hundreds of emails to go back forth to A prayer for a dying cancer ridden child, to animal pictures to Jai which ever god/goddess and the latest- the Papaya leaves save dengue victims making rounds cause me to bang my head against my desk.
Seriously, what gives? Its so nineties to send forwards. If people do remember me I would rather they call me up with a -how do you do instead of making me hit the delete button twenty times in a day?
Worst of all is when they ask - So, did you read the forward that I sent to you? And I ask -er Which one? You sent so many.
The message obviously doesn't hit home and I get a thick headed reply - The one with the poem and a cute doggie under it.
Cute doggie under it? I groan and plead- Don't torture me! No forwards please but the relative doesn't relent and replies- Fact is, I am sitting in front of the laptop and someone sent me this picture of an African emaciated baby with a vulture waiting next to it so the baby can die and the vulture can eat it.
I groan even loader. I don't need a forward to visualize that kind of a horrid tragedy. My mind already showed me a picture of a curly headed tot with skinny arms, legs, chest and a bloated belly sitting under the baking sun and a vulture hovering over it.
My relative, who I absolutely adore, refuses to relent. That is her way of bonding and my way of bonding is far more expensive. I make calls instead of sending I remember you and therefore will trash your inbox with forwards.
Friends too torture me but on Facebook. I get spammed on Facebook. I don't do the - I like you quizzes or the -How many things do you have in common? or the Join the werewolves or the vampires or the someone bit you, poked you and best all murdered you with - join my movie group, join my recipe group, join my religious group blah blah blah.
My idea of family and friends loving doesn't include forwards. Chatting online sure but even then I get fidgety. I suffer from ADD when it comes to the internet. Its like a quality quickie. Read, move on, read some more and even when I find something interesting I do not forward.
I tend to talk about the stuff that I read online and if they want the link then I forward it. Or better still put the link up on Friend Feed or Twitter.
There should be some way we can filter out forwards that have the terms - prayers, hunger, cancer, astrology, love, sisterhood, brotherhood, names of gods, jokes, pictures, blessings, good luck, bad luck, etc
Forwards to my mind are like reused condoms and I sure don't want to be part of a 'forward' group orgy. So people please deter the need to share yourselves with me via forwards.
Posted by
Deepti Lamba on March 20, 2009 06:50 PM 
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Comments
Dee:
Well-intentioned stupidity is tough to combat -- especially in those we love. But the cardinal rule must be: friends don't spam friends.
While you characterize forwards as "lovable spam", the key word is "spam", not "lovable". Indeed, it's not lovable at all; it simply comes from lovable folks.
These dear-ones aren't just insensitive to what you might-or-might-not appreciate in your already-crammed inbox, they are clueless about the spammiest aspect of their worthless mails: that they are probably the biggest source of target addresses for commercial spammers.
Your auntie sends you a cute picture of a puppy (I'm not picking on kitty fetishists, because I realize that hits close to home!) she's recived from one of her dorky friends. Look down the thread. By the time you receive it, chances are that it includes email addresses for dozens of people you've never heard of. And as it continues to circulate, the compilation of valuable, valid addresses only grows. It's like reverse-chronological venereal disease: as soon as the mail is forwarded to a commercial spammer (or someone willing to sell the addresses to a spammer), all past recipients become infected.
One difference between commercial spam and the spam of friends is that most commercial spam gets filtered, while the forwards do not. I haven't been offered a larger penis (though I probably still need one) or an academic degree (though I already have more than I require) in more than a year. But in the one problem lies the answer to the other. How do you broach a request to stop sending forwards to your digitally-hip grandmother? Not by telling her that the content she pushes around is banal and demonstrates her complete lack of originality or imagination. No, simply tell her that you love getting her mails, but that she is unwittingly participating in a commercial spamming racket.
Friends send this crap because they think (okay, "think" might be a tad ironic in this context) they are doing something nice for you. If they can be made to understand the evil in it, hopefully the same instincts of affection will keep them from hitting the "forward" button.
Cheers,
MBJ
Posted by: mbj | March 21, 2009 09:10 PM