Ever thought about kicking the e-mail habit?

Seriously.
Remember what life was like before e-mail?
It was a lot simpler.

I'm not even talking about the 20-40 spams and phishing expeditions I get every day.
I mean the stupid crap I get from friends and acquaintances. And family. Daily.

The dumb jokes and the missing girl hoaxes.
Not to mention the right wing kool-aid diatribes.
And the really ultra dumb 'send this to everyone on your list and Microsoft/Intel/Coca Cola will send you a check for $50'.
If I'm away for a day or two I come back to 150 to 200 e-mails to wade through.
It just ain't worth it anymore.

The biggest problem with e-mail is that it's too easy.
Tappety-tappety click and off it goes.
Or even worse, just click on 'forward'.
<<<<<<With very little effort on your part, and zero cost, you can flood all your buddies' inboxes with mindless drek.
My opinion of the intelligence of many of my friends and family has suffered.
You think somebody is pretty sharp and then you get one of the steaming piles of gullible bullshit and think "Aw, MAN?"

Evidently not a single e-mail message I've received in the last year was important enough for the sender to pick up the phone and call me. No, not when it's SO easy to just click.
And god forbid they should sit down and actually write a note and put it in an envelop and stick a stamp on it and mail it off.
Get real.

When e-mail first came into being it seemed to be a wonderful new medium of communication.
Now, thanks in great part to the spammers, phishers, and general dimwits it's just a chore.
And a time waster.

I'm thinking seriously about opting out.
Call me if you want to talk.
:-(

I don't see any advantage to not using it.

the problem is not email, which allows me to do something i can't do by phone -- namely keep in touch without disturbing people at work or at sleep or while having sex or otherwise busy and especially when i am in a wildly different time zone

the trouble is people who don't bother to use their options to block obnoxious email

when you got out of town, certainly, set your email so that you ONLY receive white-listed email, then you get back and you only have emails to look at from your mom

there are days when i get no email at all, and i'm not a computer genius either

It has increased my work load by 150%. Instead of researching and writing, every time I check my email, there are 20 messages needing some kind of a response from me.

Sadly, it's the ones to friends I have to ignore sometimes so that I can tend to the work-related ones, which usually amount to not-much.

Every day I wish I could abandon email. I might actually get a little work accomplished, instead of dealing with work-related "issues" four hours a day.

Sometime, I don't want to check the emall, as most of the time, it's someone wanting something else from me at work- another task!

"Come see me next time you're in the office" type stuff. So, not only do I have to respond, then I have to obligate myself to visit someone who has no relation to my work.

Email has made it easier for some people to be a nuisance to others. I don't mind it when I'm not really busy, but on busy days, GEEESH!

:hi:

I remember my first e-mail, using Bitnet to send a data set across the country. I would never give it up.

Besides, I can quit anytime I want to. ;-)

my sister has had problems with viruses at work and at home. She calls me when I email her to ask me if I emailed her...:rofl:

Email is great in business but I don't see much benefit (beyond being faster and saving paper) to it socially.

I see what you mean, but unfortunately I hate, hate, hate the phone. When someone calls me (assuming it's even someone I want to talk to) I talk for as short a time as possible. All business, then let's get together and talk in person.

I've managed to dissuade some joke-senders by never responding. Those that I still get, I just immediately delete. For repeat offenders, I just label it "spam" and it goes into my junk folder.

One thing that helps: don't give out your e-mail address.

It helps me keep in contact with friends, and save money on phone calls. Our cable modem bill is predictable. Also, it is the easyest way to reach my mom during weekdays (she is a programmer). E-mail is great for us care-giver types that have a limited ability to be out of the house.

SPAM or phishing attempt slips through, but other than that, I don't get any junk mail.

Probably because I'm anti-social and don't have contacts that would send things like that.

I always took anti-social to describe someone who gets in a lot of fights, breaks windows, and is a general menace to society.


Off topic, I liked your DRM link... I recently decided that I will never pay for any music that involves DRM... I've lost dozens of songs that I paid for because of their system.

exact definition, simply gone by what the average person called me.

Nice, I'm glad you visited the site :)

I just delete the whole thing.

I have another account that only certain people know about, no junk email to deal with.

I thought I was on your block list :cry:

I do not get that much spam, or thankfully, that many RW diatribes. Sometimes the religious or friendship things my brother sends me are pretty cool.

I do think it's kinda interesting that I have 602 unread messages in my inbox. Those are not current messages. The oldest one is from 12/11/2003 from the Wesley Clark forum. I probably should delete it. What I seem to get are about 20 emails a weeks from DFA, PFAW, True Majority, Faithful America, CBPP, etc. I do not really keep up with those, but I appreciate getting them.

For me, it is a huge drag getting to the Post Office, and it feels strange clipping letters to my mailbox.

I meant to have a serious discussion about this.
Because I'm quite serious about it.
I wish they wouldn't do that.

Don't think I ever will.
I just choose what to read and consider the source on those I think are twits.
;-)

person who knows my cellphone number, so you can't judge by me.

Redstone

sometimes I do

but too often it is STOOPID

:rofl:

Something you've already seen 7 times.

some damned fundy Xtian stuff that a few people send me!

I spend more time on forums and blogs than I do writing e-mail. But I appreciate it when it's there--it allows me to keep in touch with people that live too far away for me afford to call them on the phone, like my dear friends in England, Australia, etc.

You can make your e-mail "approved list only", to get rid of the spam. As for the asinine forwards--consider having a talk with the people sending them, and tell them that you really don't want to see that stuff.

Work is a slightly different story, but at home I check my email ONCE A WEEK (usually Friday evenings). I told everyone I know that my email check is done weekly, so nobody tries to use it for urgent communication. I still get lots of spam and inane emails, but I DO NOT let it control my time.

At work I have to keep Outlook open all the time to catch emails as they come in, but that's a job I'm getting paid to do, so I don't mind so much.

assignments and save their hate mail for future reference!
Every e-mail saves me $0.39 for a single letter, much less sending off large MS sized bundles of text! I sent a corrected 700pp double spaced MS off to the publisher's the other day and it cost over $15! The author sent it to me in chapters, zipped. My entire ISP costs only $20 a month, I'm sure I used to spend at least $10 a month in postage back in the day, plus the onus of physically writing a letter back!