Ah, the conundrum of e-mail forwards, especially these days.
After weeks of getting red-neck Republican anti-Democrat e-mail forwards from one friend (I didn't realize anyone I knew was rich enough to be a Republican?!), I got a forward from another dear friend yesterday from CatholicVote.com and that, apparently, was the tipping point.
So now her brother is most decidedly vexed with me and I have to decide whether to continue the debate of issues with him via email, not reply at all, try to point out that "see, when you feel your deeply held beliefs are under attack, you also feel compelled to fire off an email," or just write him a pleasant e-mail focusing on what a peach his sister is.
I'm leaning toward the latter.
But I'm wondering: some of these forwards (in particular ones I used to get about the immigration issue) strike me as almost as inappropriate as racial or sexist humor. Conventional wisdom seems to be that in the face of "jokes" like that, you need to shut the joke-tellers down firmly and let them know that you find that kind of thing unacceptable. But what about politics and religion, especially in the form of forwarded e-mail? If you take issue with a forwarded message are you risking hurting a friend over nothing more than electronic junk mail? But if you just delete it, are you giving tacit approval to the views expressed?
Ah yes, morality in this grand new century.
One thing I'm sure of though ... it can't be legislated.
(See how I am?)
1 comments:
Well, my pet peeve as it relates to this (I'm sorry to say) IS when people hit the 'Reply All' to something that I've been the recipient of . . . but not the sender! Obviously, the sender wanted to know what you thought of it (since s/he sent it), but do the rest of the folks care what you (I'm using that 'you' figuratively here) think? I know I don't . . . in those situations. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to hear back from people . . . who I'VE written to (directly). But, I don't want my Inbox cluttered by the Reply All responses of people I don't know.
So . . . there! ;) xox
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