Arik

1. Email stories
Some of them are supposed to be funny, some of them are supposed to shock you, and some of them are supposed to tug at your heart string. Some of them are true, some of them are out-right lies. They all have one thing in common; they're old. Most everybody who had email before Y2K has read them. At least twice. Most of us have seen them hundreds of times. There's the story about the guys who used the .22 shell for a circut breaker in their truck. There's the poem about the little girl and the drunk driver (it ends with a text version of a rose). There's the New Orleans kidney ring, and the offer from Bill Gates of $100. Oh, and let's not forget Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe.

2. Forward Marks
If you really really have to send that 4th generation email about the gas-station robber in Tuscon, do me the favor of trimming off all the extra information (like the previous generations of people/messages attached to it). Cut it out and paste it into another email, or at least make sure that the story is at the top. If it's not worth your time to make sure that I don't have to wade through the piles of crap attached to the email, then it's not worth my time to read it.

3. HTML formatted email
There's nothing greater than getting a simple email from a friend/family member. Maybe a few lines "Hi, how are you doing? Long time no see!", and having it within a pile of html formatting crap. What's even more fun is for those of us who have HTML formatting turned off, we get to try to find the message in between all of the tags. A definate no-no.

4. SPAM
With all due respect to Hormel, Spam is the worst thing that has happened to the planet since Hormel introduces Spam. About 3% of all Spam are responded to, which is something that I just can't understand. If I responded to 3% of my spam, my penis would be 3,567 feet long and my bust size would be increased by 8000 cup sizes. I don't care if they make money off of it. I'm sick of going through my email account trying to find real messages.

5. Idiots
Mailing lists are nice, for people who want to be kept in the loop about something. However, every mailing list I've ever subscribed to has suffered from idiots, losers, morons, dipsticks, and every other euphamism known to man. How hard is it to write "are you"? Why must the idiots out there shorten it to "r u"? "n e 1" ever see that before (n e 1 is interesting, as it is a remarkable one character shorter than the actual word anyone). It constantly amazes me that people who begin their email off appologizing that their 'english isn't too good, as it is not my first language' have better english skills than native speakers. It's not cute, it's not in vogue, it's stupid.

I've probably forgotten some things, but what email quirks do you hate?

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The writers of this post apologize for you being too stupid to understand it.

Stag

man, you hit all the high marks.

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"I want to do a motorboat on Shatner's manboobs" - Sam Cogley

Bean

I hate automated emails, letting me know that my email has been received.

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"I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing."

--James T. Kirk

Arik

Thanks for reminding me about that, Bean.

6. Virus Warning Emails
"This is an automatic message warning you that the message you sent to me@mydomain.com wasn't delivered because it contained a virus." No. I didn't send it. I don't have a fucking clue who you are. The virus forged the headers. They all fucking do it now. If it doesn't, the programer's even more of a dumb-fuck than his loser, wanna-get-laid friends who can figure out how to do it. Since they're all forging the headers, why are you telling me about it? All you're doing is FUDing people who don't have a clue. And wasting as much bandwidth as the people who wrote the damn virus in the first place.

If I seem a little angrier at this one, it's because I am. The people who are guilty of doing this tend to be the people who should know better, but don't care.

I suppose after doing that one, I have to do one on

7. Email viruses
As implied above, I have a very low opinion of people who purposely try to inflict damage on people and the internet community by creating a program that harms your computer, then sends itself off to all of your friends to do the same thing. It used to be rare that someone would allow themselves to be infected; now it almost seems common. And it shouldn't be. Some of my anger here is towards the low-lifes who write the virus, but a lot of it is towards the people who don't update their anti-virus software, thus allowing the rest of us to reap their rewards (and a very special place in Hell is reserved for people who open up odd attachments in their emails).

__________________
The writers of this post apologize for you being too stupid to understand it.

Bean

I hate Spam. I know you already mentioned this, but I hate a particular type of spam. The ones where the "from" title is some random name, and the title reads something like "Hey we haven't talked in awhile".

The fact that they try to dupe people by feigning familiarity doesn't bother me. It's the idea that they think I'm stupid enoug to fall for it. They think that they're gonna happen onto the name of one of my friends and catch me. Nevermind that I know who my friends are, nevermind the fact that I can see the email is 3k and obviously does not contain three thousand words (thus it's full of pictures), I rarely talk to any of my friends or family by email anymore now. It's all done through instant messaging.

It just bothers me that not only do they think people are that stupid, but in some cases, they're probably right!

__________________
"I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing."

--James T. Kirk

Arik

Oh, my favorite are the ones where they say "I'm so lonely, thought you were going to come over?" Out of curiosity, I opened one of those up and they tried to sell me auto insurance.

__________________
The writers of this post apologize for you being too stupid to understand it.

Rorschach

Sounds like you guys could use some V.1.A.g.r.a...

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Bean

Speaking of spam...

__________________
"I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing."

--James T. Kirk