this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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Actually no, I don't remember when email was ever useful and I do remember dial-up internet ๐
It used to be chain emails "Send this to 10 other people or YOU'LL DIE" and people forwarding other people's bad picture slideshows and even worse uplifting inspiring cards without looking at them, and now it's automated slop.
Those meme email chains were annoying at the time, but kinda endearing to look back on in retrospect.
I kept getting added onto ones my mum and dad were getting from a bunch of their friends that had people's random corporate/work email addresses included and stuff.....
It was a simpler time, when boomers hadn't discovered social media yet, and were making their own fun without Facebook and without the algorithm.
If someone offered me a chance to magic social media away like it never happened, and the price I had to pay was unfunny memes spamming my inbox, it's a price I'd pay gladly.
I still cringe at the memory of the one time I forwarded one -- it was something about Bill Gates, but I can't remember the details. Anyway, my uncle replied back to me with something wholesome like
It had never occurred to me that someone would lie on the internet rofffflllll. I was SO humiliated.
In college one of my friends wanted to show how easy it was to get an email chain going. He was on the student council so he wrote up something about if it was forwarded enough we would get another day off for spring break, added some email headers to look like he got it through 5 other people, then sent it to everyone on the student council. This was at a school with over 10k students.
By the end of the next day everyone I knew had gotten the email at least healf dozen times. The day after that the school paper had a story letting people know that it wasn't true.
Yep, nobody lies on the internet.
Honestly though, that sorta thing should happen more often. It sounds like a great way to demonstrate how fast misinformation spreads, without actually hurting anyone.
Maybe some of those hit by that reality would think twice next time something sounds too good to be true.
For me the worst was the slideshow fad... So many people were making some and constantly sending them to ALL their contacts and forwarding those of other people making them and you kept receiving some of people who knew someone who knew someone you knew because of the forwarding... Since the last step came from people you knew, you couldn't just block them, and if you didn't answer every once in a while it was terribly rude... Also those butt ugly sparkling greeting cards ๐ฌ
Now spam is so common that it's a perfect excuse, I just warn people that I don't read email so don't bother sending them ๐
But I agree on principle, the annoyances used to come from people who were over-enthusiastic over new technology like email, photo editing and such, and wanted to share it with everyone (willing or no). Or people who were having fun with chain emails (I might possibly have started a few on my school local network so I do understand... but to be fair no one used that network and its email system for anything else but email chains ๐ ). Now it's all automated slop.