AmirWatad.com

How (Not) to Forward an Email Message

Getting a message in your mailbox with the title “Fw:Fw:Fw very cool video” is an unpleasant experience.

Such things make me very angry. I hate these messages, and I have a strong need to punch the sender in the face when I receive them.

I’m going to reply to such messages with a link to this post, so, if you’re here because you clicked a link in an Email message, then:

1. You already know how I feel about you.

2. You should know that you did something wrong.

3. Please continue reading.

My mailbox is a private property of me, so please think twice before invading my privacy with a “cool” message someone sent to you (which s/he, in his/her turn, received from somebody in the tail of a very long chain of idiots). If you still want to forward the message, please make sure you follow these steps:

1. Think Again

Will I really be interested in such content? Will it interest everybody in your contact list?

Does it worth our time?

If not, please DON’T forward.

Is the content original, or is it something you already received hundreds of times? If it’s the latter, please DON’T forward.

2. Forward Only To Relevant People

Instead of selecting your whole contact list without using your brain (have you used it ever?), forward the message only to relevant people. Send only to people who will be grateful for receiving it. Sending to the whole contact list is an insult (I get it this way). When you insult me, I hate you.

3. For God’s Sake, Change The Subject

When I get an Email with a subject like “Fw:Fw:Fw cool message from an idiot”:

1. I know, with no doubt, that the sender is completely an idiot.

2. I realize that you didn’t bother to invest a few seconds to send a bit cleaner message, which means that you don’t really care about what I think about you, hence, I’ll feel free to tell you that you’re a moron.

3. Your message will be moved directly to my spam box (Which is a place containing similar messages from other idiots for a limited time), I won’t even bother to open it.

4. Privacy Please

When I gave you my Email address, I didn’t ask you to share it with your friends and the friends of your friends. If you decide to send an Email to me along with other people, please add the recipient to BCC field (and not to the TO field), unless you’re sending to people who already know each other. As a side effect, I won’t know that you’ve sent this message to everybody in your contact list (I’ll be able to guess though), and I won’t hate you too much.

5. Others’ Privacy

Because you read this post, you won’t show my Email address to others (will you?), but the idiot who forwarded this message to you didn’t read this post yet (you can mail him a link), and hence you can see every Email address of each of his poor friends, and the friends of of everybody before him in the chain of jerks in the body of the message. Please be informed that I’m not interested in these addresses. Please respect others’ privacy: if you want to forward a message to others, clean every irrelevant Email address from its body, otherwise, I’ll do bad things with your Email address. Don’t try me.

6. Be Clean

Please remove every irrelevant charachter from the body of the message: Buckets of Email addresses, Footer ads of Email suppliers, irrelevant comments of people who I don’t know, Separators, etc…  Please make sure the message’s body is as clean as possible.

7. Think Again

Is there another way to share this content with the world? Can you share it in a social network, a blog of yours or other media instead? If yes, please DON’T forward.

Conclusion

Whenever you feel an obsession to forward a message, please go through this algorithm:

1. Can you share it using another media? If yes, don’t forward.

2. Invest a few seconds to choose only relevant people. Never send to everybody in the contact list.

3. Add recipients to “BCC” field instead of “TO” field, unless you’re sure they don’t mind to expose their addresses to each other.

4. Clean the subject of the message.

5. Clean the body of the message. Share only relevant content, without the junky overhead.

6. Look at the message now, can I guess it’s a forwarded message? If yes, go to (1).

7. Before clicking the “send” button, think again: Are you sharing through the appropriate media? Are you sharing with the right people? Will anybody get angry of you? If yes, you have two choices: [a] DON’T forward. [b] Go to (1)

* If you forwarded a message to me, and didn’t get a link to this post during ~24 hours, then you’ve done well. If you did recieve a link, please find an original way to apologize: you’re this close to my blacklist.

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Tags: Etiquette, Thoughts