Coyote's Den

I have a major pet peeve I find in my e-mail regularly. It's not quite as vile as commercial spam, yet far more insidious... why?

Because people who know you, like you and/or who want to be your friend send you this particular type of thing. Your friends, relatives, co-workers and acquaintances send this stuff out by the pound.

Personal Junk Mail. Internet Forwards. Chain Letters.

Yes, I get regular Spam (Unsolicited Commercial Emails), also, but that's a subject for a different rant, and enough people have spewed vitriol on the subject that I'm sure I need not add anything.

I ask that people not send me junk mail of any kind. That includes "cute internet forwards", Chain letters, those stupid "add your name and forward" petition letters, piles of "jokes", which usually are about as funny as stepping in dogshit.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, these things that people forward without thinking contain:

• a zillion of those > marks that indicate quoted text, so that they are barely readable.
• a giant pile of everyone's e-mail addresses who have forwarded them, as well as lists of everyone else they forwarded them to.
• bunches of html code (often malformed or broken)
• image links or image attachments (and when those aren't broken links, or blinky and annoying, they're in the form of a bunch of little files that crap up my hard drive).

The content itself of these things is nearly always:

• material I find offensive (religious proselytization, ignorant political rants, bigoted or misogynistic jokes, or completely saccharine sayings)
• cliched stuff I've already seen a million times
• completely false or misleading information (bogus virus alerts, claims that for every email forwarded Bill Gates will donate a nickel to charity, etc.)
• giant attachments and unecessary files
• attached viruses (which don't affect my mac, but it's still annoying to know that you just forwarded a virus to everyone you know that's on windows - you twit)
• "stealth" advertisements for crap nobody needs
• complete lies and misinformation about people, places, things, companies, which spread unwarranted fear, gossip, vitriol, and mistrust

Regarding Content:
For the record:

People seem to think I'll find a whole lot of things "interesting", or think they'll be "right up my alley", who apparently missed a couple of memos.

- I am gay. That means I definitely don't want to see your e-mail about how the country would be a better place without gay people.

- I am a pagan. That means I have religious beliefs which are not Judeo-Christian in origin. That means I don't want to sign your petition to enforce good Christian prayer in schools. I also don't want to convert to your religion any more than you want to convert to mine.

- While I am "conservative" about certain things, I am, for the most part, "progressive", politically speaking, if you need a label. That means that I don't think Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh and Doctor Laura are wonderful people who offer sound advice. If you think they do, I probably am not going to be interested in your "important political update."

- I am jaded. What that means is that I am not interested in saccharine, sickly-sweet stories about happy puppies or Children who pray that mommy will get a new car and find love.

- I do not watch television. That means I don't give two shits about what sitcom is getting canceled, or what happened on Maury Povich, or gods, demons and ancestors forbid, Jerry Springer. Maybe if all the televisions in this country stopped picking up signal, the average IQ might go up a few points. So, instead of trying to get me to sign your petition to prevent TV shows from using dirty words, because your children might hear them and get poopy thoughts, turn off the TV and go do something interesting with your friends, family, or kids.

- Just because I have beliefs in metaphysical and spiritual things, and believe that I am a coyote on the inside, that does not mean that I do not apply any reasoning faculties to things I hear. In short, I am not interested in hearing about the evil plot to fluoridate water, how the world will end in 2012, how magic crystals will cure my ailments, or how you are a 20,000 year old vampire warrior fighting to save the world from demons. Take your medication and leave me alone. The face on mars is made of rocks, the president is not (sadly) an alien. Those trails in the sky come from normal, modern, aircraft engines and are not mind-controlling, illness-inducing chemicals being sprayed on us by our government to promote the new world order. KFC did not change their name because they are growing cloned chicken flesh in vats.

- I believe freedom is a higher ideal than security. That means I don't want to hear about any petitions to make everyone get national ids, monitor "suspicious people" (which usually means people who aren't "white" enough). You can also keep your bogus stories about what a good idea the oils wars are to yourself, as well as stories justifying the killing of people because they are muslim, brown, "Arabs" etc. Of course those people want to kill us... now. Just because some people from other countries don't like us doesn't mean it's any more okay for us to bomb the shit out of random people over there, than it is for anyone from "over there" to bomb the shit out of random people here. So keep your bigotry to yourself please.

- The Drug War, in my opinion, is complete bullshit. I don't want to hear any stories about how drugs destroy lives, or how pot turns people into maniacs, or how we should throw people in jail forever for doing X or weed. Yes, abusing drugs is bad. But it's not my business what other people do with their bodies, and I don't want anyone telling me what to do with mine. Additionally, I actually bothered to find out what drugs and alcohol can do to you, and know which things are bullshit and which aren't. So, anyone who is thinking of sending me a story about how we need stronger legislation to keep people from dropping X at a party, because "this one time, at band camp, a girl looked at a tab of X and her head exploded and her heart shot out of the hole."... please don't. It's horse-shit, and I'm not interested. That doesn't mean all so-called drugs are good or safe. I'm just saying that most of what you've heard is bullshit, empty rhetoric, urban legends and lies. Over 20 million Americans smoke pot regularly, and the country hasn't collapsed - and if it does, it'll probably do so because of the coke-heads that get elected to high office.

- I don't want to hear about how a person suffered from all life's ills and found strength by turning their problems over to Jesus. That's fine for you, but I prefer to deal with my own problems, however difficult, while accepting that I cannot overcome everything. To begin with, more than half the time someone forwards me an "inspirational" e-mail with a Judeo-Christian bent, the person who forwarded it turns out to be another pagan, which boggles my mind. I'm guessing you pagan folks forward this Jesus stuff in order to appear open-minded and tolerant. I prefer to be open-minded and tolerant by being nice to other people regardless of their faith, not by spreading shallow, saccharine stories proselytizing their religion. If you want to share me a personal experience about spirituality, regardless of religion, that's fine, as long as it is so I can understand you and your religion better, and it isn't intended to browbeat me into changing mine. But I am not interested in your cute inspirational (saccharine) impersonal internet forward.

A Special Note About Computer Alerts/Warnings/News:

First off, here's a big newsflash... I DO NOT USE WINDOWS!!! I use a Macintosh. To clarify, for those of you who live under a rock, Apple Macintosh computers do not run Window. They have their own operating system. What that means is, I do not care what new thing is happening with Windows computers, PCs, etc. I use a Macintosh. All of this "Windows update available" and "New Strontium RageMaker for Windows XP" and "New Windows Game" stuff is completely useless to me... also, I don't care about it and am uninterested.

I am especially not interested in why I should switch. I know they're cheaper. I know people more use them. But I have a macintosh, and it's the computer I want. If you feel the need to convince me otherwise, I'll be happy to listen, provided you stick your windows computer up your ass first.

Virus Alerts:
I get any virus alerts I need from websites. And since I have a mac, it's not an issue. Since 1983, when I first started using computers, I've come into contact with two, count them, two virii, neither harmful, and both of which I was prepared for in advance and circumvented. I've had _far_ more inconvenience over the years from the thousands (count them) thousands of virus alerts people have forwarded to me. Like other mass e-mailings, I not only get them from my friends, but from many of the people they sent them to in _addition_ to me... along with the responses where people do "reply to all". I have news folks... these e-mails are themselves a virus. Infectious, and capable of getting another organism to propagate and distribute them.

Also, to all you Windows users who send me the latest "Macintosh Virus Alert" to demonstrate to me how silly I am to have a Mac, and how even macs aren't safe from viruses... here's a newsflash... 99.999999% of those "informational" articles about the latest Mac virus are made out out of whole cloth. Nearly all of them are completely fictitious.

"Sign-and-Forward" Petition Letters:

Listen to me very carefully.

You can't manage a petition via e-mail.

Period.

If they ever did get back to the originator, they'd be filled with duplicate entries, and hundreds of people's entries would be missing because chains got broken. And most of these "petition" style letters aren't real anyway. They're created by bored people who are curious to see how long it will take for their "petition" to distribute around the internet. As for those "every signature will cause a nickel to be donated by they are _false_.

It's not real, it doesn't happen. If you want to run a real petition, go to one of the petition websites, and create it and send the URL to your friends. That will enable signatures to be collected in a central place. Better yet, distribute the URL to existing petitions that are about the same issue. But don't send "add your name" petitions to me, where I'm supposed to add my name to an e-mail. I throw them away. Oh... one more thing... _some_ of those "petition" or other add-your-name-and-send-to-your-friends e-mail petitions are just there so someone can add people to spam lists. Like anyone needs more spam.

Help this Child/Charity/Cause by adding your name Chain Letters:

Okay folks, for the billionth time - Bill Gates or Coca Cola are not doing a special charity drive where some kid with cancer or a rainforest-saving organization get a nickel for each e-mail forwarded. Those chain letters are pulling your leg. They're garbage. Do not forward them. Throw them in the trash. This meme is older than the internet. Before the internet, the rumors were passed by word of mouth or physical chain letters (rarely) and tried to convince people that if you saved pop-tops from soda cans, cigarette butts (!), box tops, or other trash that money would be donated to charity when you turned them in. It's bullshit. Think about it.

Good Luck/Bad Luck Chain Letters:
These are my least favorite. These obnoxious viral memes exist only to propagate themselves and promote magical thinking (by which I mean delusional thinking, not a functional belief in the metaphysical). They promise good things (that won't happen), and threaten bad things (that won't happen) to get people to send them on. I think they are superstitious and unethical, and I don't like them. When I get them, they go straight into my trash. I don't care if my sainted grandmother sends me one of these from beyond the grave, if I get one, it gets deleted, unread. They aren't cute, they don't work, and I do not want them.

"Baited" junk mail:
Some chain letters or other junk have some funny joke, or a nice story, or something else seemingly worthwhile in them. This is only there to encourage you to forward the crap.
So... take out the crap before sending it to people you like. Send just the joke or the story. Don't send the threat/whine/plea/advertisement part.

All those e-mail addresses and quotes, and "forwarded to" bits:

Apparently, a bunch of people are either too lazy to properly forward a message, or they are unaware what things like "Reply to All" or "BCC" mean.

The result? When you send me all this crap, you are also sending my email address to all those other people, who then add me to their damn junk mail forward lists.

For heaven's sake, before you forward _anything_ to _anyone_ take out the headers, extra e-mail addresses, and other junk.

When you don't, it arrives in people's e-mail box (mine for instance) fifty pages long, formatted all weird and unreadable with quote marks and indents... and best of all loads of e-mail addresses... many of which I get to see again when they start replying to people.

I really hate when people "harvest" my e-mail address out of bulk mail and chain letters... sometimes, your friends get the e-mail that you sent to them, to me, and they _also_ include me in their list of "people to send cute things to". The result being that I get loads and loads of junk _on top_ of my regular daily quotient of spam. The best part is that since it usually comes from people I know somewhere along the chain, I have to manually delete it, instead of letting my junk mail filter get it.

Just to be clear...

When I get chain letters from people I like, it puts me into a bad situation. I don't want the things, and they annoy me, but I don't want to offend or hurt the feelings of the people who send them. So, I either have to put up with it, and continue to be annoyed, or I have to risk offending someone I probably know and like, and so it gives me stress.

Get it? It doesn't make me feel happy to have heard from you when it is in the form of a chain letter or forwarded junk mail, it simply adds a little dollop of frustration to my day.

BTW: There is no chain letter or junk internet forward, that I will receive, and go "Wow! This one is an exception to the rule, I really like this one!"

But I won't. Don't send it to me. I've taken plenty of time to indicate that I do not want this type of stuff.

Period.

There are NO chain letters, of any kind, that I actually want. And in case you are thinking of sending me one to prove me wrong... I'll tell you why it _can't_ prove me wrong... because as soon as I see it's a chain letter, it goes straight in the trash, without me reading it. And the _best_ way for me to trash it _faster_ is to include a personal note that says "No, really, read THIS one! This one is good!".

I can't count the number of times someone has sent me a junk mail forward, with a line at the top that says "I know you said you hate these things, but this one is just too good."

...and then? Underneath that glowing statement about the junk-mail's worth?

A fart joke. Or a spiel about how we'll all be happier if we stop being gay and accept Jesus in our lives.

I don't know a way to express this without hurting someone's feelings. I get these from people I barely know, but I also get them from people I really like. For the people who I really like, I think it's important you know that I really _don't_ like chain letters.

At this point though, the major source of these annoying pieces of electronic garbage are people who sign up for one of the websites I maintain, and who think that since I'm so nice to run them (or because they decide I'm an authority figure they should try to "get in good with"), they start sending me this crap. It is not a way to get on my good side. It is a way to get on my bad side, make a bad impression on me, or convince me that your e-mail address belongs on my junk mail filter.

There are some legitimate forms of "forwarded" e-mail which don't piss me off. These only apply if you are specifically sending me the e-mail, as opposed to just quickly forwarding a pile of junk to a slew of people.

• If you have a _real_ petition (not the kind where you add your name to an e-mail), you can send me an e-mail with a link to the petition site.
• If you have become aware of some important political, social, or environmental action that you truly believe needs support, tell me about it.

Keep in mind though: I am already on a bunch of "political alert" mailing lists. If I'm interested in something, I'm perfectly capable of looking it up on my own.

If you aren't sure whether I want something, I probably don't, and you should ask before sending it.

By the way:

Here is the appropriate method for using "Reply to All": Don't. If you have trouble not doing it, please try chopping off all your fingers. That should help.

Here is what "BCC" is for: Bcc stands for "Blind Carbon Copy". That means that when you put a bunch of e-mail messages in that line, the people who get your e-mail don't see the e-mail addresses of the other people you send the thing to.

By the way... why is this so long? Because I plan to send it to anyone who sends me junk mail, chain letters, etc. I will assume that if you think I want to get unsolicited crap from you, that you must be interested in hearing my responses, and obviously you don't mind your in-box being filled with junk.