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Spammed By Mom
from the it-will-never-end dept
It's amazing how many times I've heard this same story, either written up online or from friends. It's terrible to say, but often the worst spammers we know, are our own mothers (story only available at reg. required LA Times site right now). I know a few friends who have had to put their foot down and tell their mothers to never email them again if anything in the email was a "forwarded" message of any kind. For the record, I'll say that my mother (and my grandmother) has never been the sort of person to do such a thing (I've trained her well...). However, the writer of this article says that he can't bring himself to confront his mother - and I imagine many people have that sort of issue. Of course, if she's like most mothers, won't she read this column? In the meantime, though, he's debating other options, including spamming her back.
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It's like this: Mom wants to connect, but doesn't know quite how. Rather than genrate her own content, she fwds stuff. Yeah, it's kinda lame for us sophisticates, but cut poor mom some slack, she means well.
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True, but....
If I get one more animated email that moves, jiggles, or plays sounds, I am going to die! I do cut her slack by never let her know how annoying they are, but sometimes you want to scream!
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So true
Thanks! That made me laugh out loud - it's so true.
The amount of times, my mother has sent me (and her circle of friends) dubious instructions to delete half their Windows system folder...
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It isn't just moms. My dad forwards me the same jokes I send to him. He also forwards every joke anybody else sends him too, so I'm not unique in that. I only forward a joke if I think it's pretty funny, but he sends jokes that are so stale they make dust come out of my subwoofer.
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MY MOTHER IS CEO of the SPAM Corporation !
Cut Mom some slack ? ! ? ... Cut me some slack ! ... not only do I answer 50 - 100 email messages a day from actual paying clients, but I contend with dancing hampsters FWd'd from Mom , Rules of Safe Driving FWd'd from Mom , Some article regarding retirement taxes that-I-couldn't-care-less-about-because-I'm-too-busy-cleaning-out-my-email-boxes-to-ever-believe-I-w ill-have-the-chance-to-retire , - CUT & PASTED from Mom ( because I DO try to cut Mom some slack & teach her how to use the machine to make it easier for me to actually FIND the content instead of searching through umpteen million FWd'd headers ) ... now where the heck was I ???? ... Oh yeah ! ... CLEANING OUT 15 bazillion FWd's from my MOM ! Its gotten so bad in our household that my brother ( who's a network administrator ) has placed filters and rules to dump anything our Mom sends to him that has " FWD " in the heading ... As he sez: " If you can't take the time to cut & paste it to me, its not worth reading ". I work in the technology field as a phone tech for a large bank. My Dad is the Director of a technology school ... Believe me, having a " techno-literate " Mother is a curse ... I've had to block her from my Instant Message clients because she thinks I can have a running all day conversation with her while trying to solve complex technology issues for clients. My Mom is also know to use Email for the purpose of telling us in quite colorful ( read: curse words ) work-email-filter-inducing langugage what she thinks about whatever happens to be on her mind when she sits down in front of the computer. It has only gotten worse too ... We've begged & pleaded with her to use the technology responsibly, but shes like a teenager with a driver's license & a new car. And to top this all off, I'm responsible for taking Gator, Xupiter, Alexis & every other damn tracking piece of software shes inadvertantly downloaded back off the computer on a weekly basis ! So I must say ... keep your Mothers off Computers ... Teach them to " Just Say No ! " ... Do not allow them to fall under peer pressure ... Just because Sandy's Granchildren send her Email pictures of every mundane thing they do is no excuse to allow your Mother to engage in such borish practices ! Remind your Mothers that back in their day they had to trudge all the way out to the mailbox to send messages ! Consider giving yourself or another loved one a " Time Out " by diconnecting Mom's Cable modem ...
Please feel free to send all your FWD'd spam to my Mom @ DandLGooding@Suscom.net ...
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I got lucky
My mom went back to school and got her CS degree. The stuff she forwards is actually *good* stuff that's funny. :)
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Asking a client to stop...
Even harder is when you build a really great relationship with a client and they start forwarding you junk mail/chains... They think they are doing you a favor, then you have to ask them to please stop without making them feel dumb or rejected. Not fun.
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Not Mom but......
Not Mom (or Dad) but same premise. I get a mail from a friend that has approx 30 ppl in the CC list and the body of the message reads:
Just thinking of you... have a great day!
Isn't that why we have phones?
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