Stop the E-mail Forwarding!

October 20, 2009 by Judith

A site visitor writes….

“I need a form letter I can e-mail friends and family to end forwarded jokes, etc.”

Funny this e-mail was sent to me from someone who reflected absolutely no E-mail Etiquette or courtesy in contacting me. Anyhoo, no form letter is necessary. If you don’t have the nerve to tell folks how you feel, guide them on the proper way to forward and that you would appreciate not receiving these extraneous unnecessary e-mails, simply point them to my article on the topic:

How do I ask someone to stop forwarding me all those silly emails?

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Comments

6 Responses to “Stop the E-mail Forwarding!”

AT Williams on October 20th, 2009 1:58 pm

Its so strange that people insist on sending forwards. I think that is the beauty of a Facebook or other social networking site- these personal jokes can be filtered out of your personal mail. If you are interested, you can check it out. If not, your friend gets to share it and at least feel like you saw it. It is horrible when you see that person’s name in your mailbox and you know that its a forward you are going to delete. Tell the person to get an FB account. If they want to reach you- just you, then they can email your account address.
Judith on October 20th, 2009 9:29 pm

Hey, AT:

Thanks for stopping by and great suggestions! We live in an “all about me” culture — FB caters to that while allowing you to only have to “see” what you want. But… what I found in the 15 years I’ve been promoting proper E-mail Etiquette is that the “all about me” mentality means these folks are not going to think about you, getting on FB for you or for any other reason unless it allows them to continue to think only of what they want to do at the moment.

I know that sounds a bit harsh, but I would be proven wrong if all the forwarders out there actually took a moment and thought about whether how and what they were forwarding was actually with the recipient in mind. If they did do that, there would be very little forwarding!
AT Williams on October 21st, 2009 2:20 pm

I see. I bet they would just keep forwarding anyway. Well, with the All About Me notion, I encouraged my aunt- woman in her 50s- to sign up for FB so that she could share more “All about her”, she did it and now I don’t get those forwards and she sends pokes, jokes, videos and leaves her trivial comments in her status updates. Back in the day, people sent those forwards around basically as a “poke” to let people know that you were in their thoughts- especially when they didn’t have any big news to share. One of my friends discovered that a good friend of his died in the Thailand Tsunamis because of so many unreplied forwards. With facebook, you can see if someone is alive because of all the updates on your FB behavior.

Email etiquette now has to be expanded to all these social networks. Do you respond to comments, deleting friends, privacy and whether its appropriate to divulge all one’s deep thoughts or promotional ads across every friends wall. Ay yai yai! Its all good though. Keep up the great site! I enjoy the reading here!
Judith on October 22nd, 2009 5:33 pm

Thank you for your kind words and for sharing, AT!

If you think about it e-mail etiquette or any etiquette is about courtesy and thinking of the other person — not just yourself. The issues you mention with etiquette and social networks are valid. Everyone should use their common sense and discretion as to what they should share about themselves as well as what they share about their “friends”.

A good rule of thumb is think about if what you are going to share is something you would want others to share about you — if the answer is no — then don’t do so for others either.
John-in-Toronto on July 15th, 2010 7:59 am

Forward Buttons

As everyone is aware, Forwarded jokes, etc. are the major source of SPAM addresses. It would be a simple matter for the email client producers, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Mozilla et al. to default the forward button to a “Friendly” format. This would delete header information from the original and force the recipient list into the BCC: field (while the sender’s address would go into the TO: field.

If the user wanted to forward in the old manner (can’t imagine why) that would take an extra click.

Please use your influence to get the mail client makers to offer this.
Judith on July 15th, 2010 8:59 am

Hey, John:

Thanks for your comments! Wouldn’t that be nice if e-mail software pulled a little more weight in facilitating proper forwarding? That extra click would most certainly cause many to use the new feature over the old — I know for a fact that one click can in fact cause folks from taking action. One click is too much effort — who would have thought!

Alas, I feel I have no influence other than to allow folks like you and I to comment here about what we feel would be good ideas. Maybe some smartie out there in a position of true influence or who has connections can pass your idea along.