forwards

You know what I'm talking about—the cutesy stories and poems that are supposed to make you cry; the urban legends disguised as horrifying/terrifying fact; the endless petitions that don't actually go anywhere or stand for anything. I'm going to rant about these, and I don't apologize for it!

Several things annoy me.

1. snopes.com has now been around long enough that before sending out any forwarded message that is supposed to be based in "fact", it's a good idea to look it up and make sure it really is true. Sending a false forward in this day and age is damaging to the credibility.

2. If you're sending around a petition that's supposed to help breast cancer research, stop drunk driving, or cure any other major social ill, please read the forward carefully so that you can answer a few simple questions: what is the petition calling for? To whom is it going? Will they actually care?

3. In the unlikely event that you can answer all three questions in #2 in ways that satisfy you, only forward it to people you're actually in contact with. It's annoying and insulting to receive a forwarded petition from someone who doesn't bother to contact you in 'real life'. A subset to this one is to make sure that you let the people you're sending the petition to know who you are. If you simply sign (for example), "Ben", and you're sending the email out to everyone in your address book, chances are half the people don't know which "Ben" you are and may report you as a spammer.

4. If you've just read the most moving poem of your life, all about puppies and kittens and the joy of parenthood that makes you cry because every single moment is so precious you must squeeze it until the very life is choked out of it ... don't forward it. I guarantee, 90% of the people you'd send it to have already seen it.

5. And, again, in this day and age this one is pretty basic. If it has an attachment, don't forward it. Most people won't bother to open it, and many of them will be annoyed with you.

Of course, you may wonder, if I can't forward in all the cases above, when can I? Answer: any time something is genuinely funny, moving, or necessary to know. And, even more important, know your audience. Forwards would work a lot better if each one were only forwarded to a few carefully chosen people at a time instead of randomly blanketed to an entire address book.

(All of the above lead me to wonder ... how long will it be until classes in netiquette become standard for emerging computer users? Probably too long.)