I get emails. A lot of them! Mostly because I work at a blog (not this one) and people want me to put their stuff on there. And because I have the brain disease that I think I might actually receive an important, timely missive there, I have push notifications turned on. I know. It's a real mess. I'm trying.
Here is my gripe: for every one email that's useful or even work-related, there are 9,000 messages that are just garbage. Over the years I've become more sympathetic to the people who have jobs that involve writing these emails — because yeah! we all need money and healthcare! — but the thing I can't figure, right now, is why I'm still getting so many emails. We're in the middle of a pandemic, right? Nobody's doing stuff! Everything is closed! The world has stopped its spinning, nearly. And yet every five or so minutes I get an email about a product that will not exist in a year.
What's worse is that now, sandwiched between these absolutely trash emails, I get emails about beloved restaurants closing and fundraisers that people are running — you know, the kind of thing that makes me have feelings. I just can't figure out why people are still sending PR emails about Direct 2 Consumer bullshit that doesn't mean anything without even a single joke!
I mean I understand it. (Again: money, healthcare.) I just can't wrap my head around the kind of person you'd have to be to burn some VC's not-that-hard earned cash right now pretending the world hasn't ended. You know what I mean?
I keep getting messages about things that barely mattered before and literally do not matter in the slightest now. Maybe my priorities changed? I'm not sure. I am still trying not to leave my house.
The thing is, we could end this now. Let's just agree to only send emails that are meaningful in some way — like, add a cool link, or a joke, or any other semblance of humanity. I can't stand the focus-grouped, produced-for-mass-consumption corporate tone of messages that run hundreds of words but do not have any meaning; you probably can't either. This is where we can work together.
I propose that we add an acknowledgement to the top of every useless email we are mandated by some authority to send. It should say: you know this doesn't matter, and I know that too, but we're both here because we need to stay alive.
Thank you. Some of the publicists sending me emails have actually been acknowledging some version of "we both know this doesn't matter" and also "maybe you, like me, cope by working?" and even "but if not, let me know, I'll stop emailing you for a while." I was surprised by the last of these. Only a couple people have reached out with that version. But still. It made me believe in us all as humans just a little bit.
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