I’ve ranted this rant before. Many times over the years. But … hey, it’s my blog and I’ll rant if I want to. If you’re looking for Profound Wisdom today instead of minor babblings, I’ve got just the guy for you …<\/i><\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
You want to get on my bad side? Put me on an email list without asking.<\/p>\n
Want to make it worse? Use open cc.<\/p>\n
For years, when people would do this, I’d quickly tell them, “Don’t do that. Now take my name off your list.”<\/p>\n
But I got tired of the inevitable responses, of which there were (and still are) exactly two: 1) “Your a PHONY. I thought you believed in learning the TRUTH!!!!!! You don’t DESERVE my information!!!!” or 2) Well, how else am I supposed to do it? What’s bcc? I never heard of that. If you want me to use that, you should tell me how … <\/p>\n
So for a while, instead of going through that routine, I started directing all such mail straight into Trash. Unfortunately, that meant I’d still occasionally see it while doing mailbox maintenance.<\/p>\n
There are two kinds of people who thrust us, all unwilling, onto open cc lists. There’s Aunt Mamie (we all have one) who sends cute cat pictures, chain letters, urban legends, and glurge about angels delivering blessings to adorable, usually fatally ill, children. The other is The Sage, who is Inspired to Bestow His (very own) Profound Wisdom Upon The Little People in the form of unsolicited commentary.<\/p>\n
Until this afternoon the mail of one such was landing in my Trash box regularly. He was just a neocon blowhard, but every word was written as if it was THE Word. You know? He did not merely speak, he Proclaimed.<\/p>\n
More annoying yet, he even has a pretentious email address. I won’t use his real name, but his addy calls him “JoeBlowAuthor<\/strong>.” <\/p>\n Now writers do not call themselves “author” except in rare and limited circumstances. If a publisher asks us to write a bio-blurb (yes, we frequently write our own), we’re pretty much obliged to say things like, “Claire Wolfe, author of Penguins of the Arizona Desert …<\/i>” <\/p>\n Otherwise, forget it. We’re writers<\/i>. We write<\/i>. We no more go around styling ourselves Authors than film directors go around introducing themselves as auteurs<\/i>. <\/p>\n But I digress.<\/p>\n A couple months ago, MrAuthor<\/b> wrote something that got members of the cc list fired up and they did what people on cc lists do; they started filling up everybody else’s email boxes with flag-waving “reply alls.” (It’s a measure of this guy’s impact that it took years<\/i> of being on his list before something he said finally drew that kind of reaction.)<\/p>\n I belatedly wrote and told HisAuthorness<\/b> that open cc was Not Good, that I’d never asked to be on his list in the first place, and please take me off<\/i>.<\/p>\n In response, he started using bcc (I admit, without whining). But kept me on the list. <\/p>\n I gritted my teeth and kept cleaning out the Trash. <\/p>\n Until this morning when the email that landed there said something to this effect: “We should nuke Iran. In fact, we should nuke all the Muslims or anybody else who gives us trouble. In fact, if we had nuked Korea and nuked Vietnam back in the day, the whole world would respect us so much now that they’d be bowing down to the the U.S. and we wouldn’t have all this trouble and it would Save The Lives of Patriotic Americans.”<\/p>\n I wrote back: “Take me off your mailing list.”<\/p>\n He wrote back: “And you (sic) email address is????”<\/p>\n Grrrr. I eventually got him to figure that out. <\/p>\n He ultimately removed my name, concluding, “Sorry to see you go as I had always thought you enjoyed reading the original views of others.”<\/p>\n I think that’s the polite way of saying, “Your a PHONY!” But at least the JoeBlowAuthor<\/b> phase of my life is over.<\/p>\n Now, if I could just kill off the last of those glurge-dripping angels …<\/p>\n [\/rant]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve ranted this rant before. Many times over the years. But … hey, it’s my blog and I’ll rant if I want to. If you’re looking for Profound Wisdom today instead of minor babblings, I’ve got just the guy for you … —– You want to get on my bad side? Put me on an email list without asking. Want to make it worse? Use open cc. For years, when people would do this, I’d quickly tell them, “Don’t do that. Now take my name off your list.” But I got tired of the inevitable responses, of which there were…<\/p>\n