Unsubscribe! Unsubscribe! Unsubscribe!
By Todd Stadler · Thursday, February 22, 2007 11:58am
Ah, e-mail! Is there anything that allows people to so easily demonstrate their lack of understanding? To which, of course, the answer is, "Yes, pretty much anything will do," but the point I'm making right now is about e-mail.
I got in to work this morning to find that the lovely folks at Industry magazine had sent unsolicited e-mail to me containing a press release for some event. (This spamming came as a bit of a shock, given that everything I know about Industry from a cursory read of their wonderful Web pages, seems above-board, and not at all scammy.)
But more important than the content of that quickly-deleted e-mail was the fact that its sender — let's call him Mr. Root A. ListDotIndustryMagazineDotCom — sent it via a list that anyone can post to. Including, most notably, replies to the original spam.
Perhaps that doesn't mean much to you, so I'll give you a rough run-down of the contents of my e-mail inbox this morning:
From: root@list.industrymagazine.com
Subject: Industry Magazine Hosts the First Annual Gala to Benefit the Orlando Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
From: Deidre Barry
Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE
From: Ed Cartwright
Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE
From: Nancy Limberis
Subject: Re: UNSUBSCRIBE {the subject of every subsequent e-mail}
Content: This is the 3rd email to me in the last hour! Why is this Unsubscribe coming to me? Please remove any emails "@{domain}.com" from your list immediately.
From: Lynn Peterson
Content: Help - how do I get off this list??
From: Dean Wild
Content: please REMOVE me from your list!
From: Cynthia Conner
Content: Please take me off of whatever list you have. I keep receiving these emails from a variety of individuals and don't understand why they come to me. You are violating federal law by sending these emails!
From: Steve Hewitt
Content: I am not sure why I received your e-mail with a request to unsubscribe, but yours is not the only one I am receiving. I did not send you the notice below, and can not unsubscribe you from receiving other notices from Industry Magazine.
From: Kirk Woundy
Content: Please remove any emails @{domain}.com from this list as well.
From: Theresa Gerardi
Content: Quit sending me this!!! This is about the 6th one!
From: Frank Trotta
Content: this e-mail is not from {our company}. thank-you
From: Emerson Blake
Content: The same thing is happening to me -- I am receiving requests to unsubscribe people, but I have nothing to do with the original message.
From: Jan Wilson
Content: Please unsubscribe us from this mailing list. I'm getting messages from others as well.
From: Wally Lage
Content: You're beginning to piss me off.
From: Ed Cartwright {Again!}
Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE
From: Steve Hewitt {Again!}
Content: I am not sure why I received your e-mail with a request to unsubscribe, but yours is not the only one I am receiving. I did not send you the notice below, and can not unsubscribe you from receiving other notices from Industry Magazine.
And so on. Oh the humanity. A confusing mishmash of people yelling at some invisible entity and other people protesting that they are not that entity. Sometimes both.
Thankfully, ten hours or so after the original spam was sent, people figured out the whole messy feedback-loopiness of it all and stopped complaining. But it reminded me of the problem of public nuisances: how do you stop them without becoming one yourself?
As an example of that problem, I present the following drama, which took place in my head upon hearing a couple talk too loudly on the bus the other day:
Couple: {Loudly} Blah blah blah ...
Me: Hey, could you guys talk more quietly? No one wants to hear about your Pine-Sol® issues!
Person #1: Hey buddy, why don't you shut up? Nobody asked your opinion, either!
Me: Listen, I wasn't talking to you, I just wanted this couple to ...
Person #2: I have an idea. Why don't you both shut up so we can all ride in peace?
Person #3: Everybody, please shut up! You're not helping by yelling at everyone to ...
Person #4: Aaagh! If everyone would stop yelling at everyone to shut up, then everyone would shut ...
Person #1: Look, don't go tellin' me to shut up! You're yelling, too!
Person #2: Fine, let me be the last person to tell everyone to shut up, and then it can be quiet!
Persons #3 and #4: Who do you think you are?!
Person #1: Why do you get to be the last person to tell everyone to shut up?
Person #2: Fine, then you can be the last person to tell everyone to shut up!
Person #3: What, are you abdicating from your Shut-Up King throne and handing power to me, Your Hushness?
Person #4: You haven't shut up yet! When're you gonna start?
Hmm. I didn't really plan a way out of that scene when I started it, so I guess I'll have to end it there. But I think my point is clear: the problem isn't that e-mail makes people stupid. It's that both e-mail and buses make people stupid. And both should be outlawed.
2 comments so far
1 Feb 26 '07 8:17am:
Edward replied:
"Yup, same thing happending to us. Ha Ha. I thought someone had hijacked our email server again. Fortunately, just wait for problem to go away by itself."
2 Mar 04 '07 7:38pm:
Cryptie the Cryptosporidium replied:
"I call it the "shut up loop"--it used to happen in junior high PE class all the time. We couldn't play football until everyone was quiet. Only one person would be talking, so someone would tell him to shut up. Someone would tell that kid to shut up, and in a matter of second the gym was filled with a deafening roar of shut-ups. Only a few budding smartasses stayed above the fray (myself included).
As for the e-mail thing, it boggles the mind that this is still happening in 2007. I could see 1997, maybe, but I just assumed everyone is so used to spam by now that you just delete it and move on with your life. What "industry" does this magazine cover? If it's the computer industry, then your story has transcended "funny" and "surreal" and moved up to "Kafkaesque.""