The Polite Way...

[Psion]

What is the most polite way to deal with this situation? Have you ever been in a similar situation?

Somewhat similar. The person was a gamer, and, incidentally, harvested his emails from the DCRPG list, so you might have experienced this. Anyways, he sent out little pack patting propoganda aligned to his political party. Due to a position I held, I knew that a particular fact he was quoting was out to lunch, and I told him as much, and asked him to take me off his mailing list.

As I had no interest in maintaining any further relation with him, I guess I that was a bit of a different situation.

My sister sends me Melaluca (MLM vitamin) stuff. Does that count?

 

[Torm]

Could always do what I've done before: Most of the time, people who send you this stuff send it out to everyone in their address book or a large subset of it at once. If it is really something you disagree with, Reply To All, and reply intelligently and politely with a rebuttal. Might get you taken off their "list", or it might start a dialogue with people who might not otherwise consider or even be exposed to your point of view. Win - Win.

 

[wingsandsword]

My sister sends me Melaluca (MLM vitamin) stuff. Does that count?

MLM? *shudder* Run away! Run away!

But seriously, yeah, if you've told her you don't want to be part of her MLM system, and she keeps trying to bring you in on her pyramid scheme, its spam from that point on. By definition: Unsolicited Commercial E-mail.

Personally, I really like the "donate money to a cause that you like but the other person hates in their name" idea, because to be honest there are plenty of major groups in this country of just about every ideology imaginable, and many of them are fairly well-meaning (and could even be called charitable in some cases) even if they have a political agenda that is polarizing.

It still doesn't beat the worst and most amateur SPAM I ever saw: Back in '96 when I got my first e-mail account as I came to college, the campus e-mail system was set up so we had to insert a floppy disk to check our e-mail, as it copied the email to our disks. Very early on I was the recipient of some really bad SPAM that didn't use any kind of anonymous remailing technology or the like, somebody actually typed (or cut & pasted) thousands of names into the "To:" field, which was thus sent as part of the message, making the actual spam mail hundreds of thousands of kilobytes. Then it got worse as a few people hit "reply to all" and angrily said to remove them from this list since it was jamming up their mailbox, so each reply took up several hundred K, and very quickly my poor little diskette overloaded and my mail program crashed, then my mailbox filled up.

 

[fusangite]

Could always do what I've done before: Most of the time, people who send you this stuff send it out to everyone in their address book or a large subset of it at once. If it is really something you disagree with, Reply To All, and reply intelligently and politely with a rebuttal. Might get you taken off their "list", or it might start a dialogue with people who might not otherwise consider or even be exposed to your point of view. Win - Win.

I find this only encourages them and increases the frequency and volume of the e-mails.

 

[Rel]

I don't know about QD's correspondent but my guy has developed a political view that people who don't take what he's saying seriously are indifferent to the perceived impending genocide against the ethnic group of which he is part. That's why he's so exercised about all this stuff.The problem is that my guy is still a friend, just a friend who's been in imperfect psychological health the past couple of years -- not crazy, just isolated, depressed and drinking heavily.

Ok, ok, I get the message! I'll stop sending the Eskimo porn!

 

[diaglo]

Ok, ok, I get the message! I'll stop sending the Eskimo porn!

[homer] mmmm.... :drools: Eskimo pie [/homer]

 

[diaglo]

I have a friend that keeps on sending me emails that I don't agree with (they're about politics, but I don't want this thread to go down that path). She knows what I believe, but she just keeps on sending them. I get a new forward, photo, or link to some stupid website every day. It's driving me INSANE.

What is the most polite way to deal with this situation? Have you ever been in a similar situation?

tell her you don't want to receive those emails.

direct. no ambiguity. if she continues. Rules Wizard in Outlook = autodelete

 

[fusangite]

Ok, ok, I get the message! I'll stop sending the Eskimo porn!

You can keep sending the harp seal stuff, though, ok?

 

[IronWolf]

Could always do what I've done before: Most of the time, people who send you this stuff send it out to everyone in their address book or a large subset of it at once. If it is really something you disagree with, Reply To All, and reply intelligently and politely with a rebuttal. Might get you taken off their "list", or it might start a dialogue with people who might not otherwise consider or even be exposed to your point of view. Win - Win.

We used to do this with some of Lady IronWolf's emails. She would have lots of naive friends who would forward all those silly hoax emails around thinking they were legit. I would just help her find the hoax-buster sites and she would reply to all with several links to how the email was a hoax and has been a known hoax for sometime. This seemed to work quite well for this particular genre of email people like to forward around.

 

[Desdichado]

I have a friend that keeps on sending me emails that I don't agree with (they're about politics, but I don't want this thread to go down that path). She knows what I believe, but she just keeps on sending them. I get a new forward, photo, or link to some stupid website every day. It's driving me INSANE.

What is the most polite way to deal with this situation? Have you ever been in a similar situation?

Keelhaul the saucy wench, ye liver-hearted lubber. If that doesn't curb her flapping tongue, maroon her on a deserted isle with naught but a pistol with one ball and a waterflask.

On my ship, we don't put up with that kind of mutinous nonsense.