Rant #1,334: The Email Blues

I don't know about you, but my email has kind of morphed over the years from a true message center to what is akin to an electronic garbage pail.

I used to get messages from friends, people who belonged to my groups, from groups I belonged to, and others, with interesting tidbits about this and that.

I always enjoyed getting regular mail, now known as snail mail, so I was sort of in a mail "nirvana" with my email.

However, over the years, those interesting messages have lessened to a few a week, and now, my email is overrun with ads ...

Ads mainly cajoling me to buy things I don't need, ads for organizations hoping to engage me, and ads from department stores and online entities, all looking for my interest.

Well, I have to tell you, I am not interested one bit.

Maybe not one bit, maybe extremely slightly, at best.

Every day, I go through my email, and I have to tell you, I immediately delete between 10 and 30 messages each day, all pertaining to some sort of advertising.

And since we are in the holiday season, it is getting even worse.

I have to say that once in a while, there is one of these advertising emails that does engage me, and I did use one coupon when I did my holiday shopping, which ended up saving me about $30 on something that I bought, so I am not immune to using these things to my advantage.

But honestly, those types of emails are few and far between. If I am deleting between 10 and 30 messages a day, that equals out to between 3,650 and over 10,000 messages a year. If I get two or three that interest me over the course of a year ... well, as you can see, the percentage of "good" advertising emails is very, very low.

But those that send these things--which to me are almost "legal" spam--are banking on it that you will use what they have to sell you, and I guess if I am using one during the holiday season, millions of others are using one, two, and it all ads up to big business for these entities.

I don't even worry about "real" spam anymore--I might get one or two of these a year now. It is the advertising emails that I really have to think about.

Happily, just about every one that I get is from a legitimate organization, whether it is a retailer, a charity, or some online presence.

I don't have to worry about that, but I do hate the proliferation of these things.

And for Black Friday ... don't ask. I was getting rid of emails left and right.

Look, I understand that this is the latest way to advertise your goods and trumpet issues that you back.

But there are just so many of them, that whatever the sender is trying to do is getting lost in the email fog, to a certain extent.

Heck, some entities send three or four such messages out to me each day.

Enough already!

I get the message, literally, and it generally goes right where it belongs ...

In the trash.