Sunday, April 23, 2006

Few days back someone at office sent a mail addressed to some Shridhar to an entire mailing group. It took 2 mins for me to realize the mail was not intended for me. I ignored it and deleted it. Immediately mails started pouring in, all wondering why they had received the mail. After 10 min more mails started pouring in, everybody asking the others to stop replying with 'reply all' option. They themselves used that option! Then the mails got abusive, people attacked the person who sent the wrong mail and people who used 'reply all' option. Then there were some smart alecks attacking all software engineers for being so stupid. I checked their profiles, they were techies themselves. Even after an apology mail from the original sender, the mails continued to pour in, the tone changing from down right rude to condescending.

Everybody wanted one thing, their inboxes to not be cluttered yet all contributed to the cause. Made me wonder why many have this inherent need to put others down. Is that the only way they can prove their worth? Another example is the Bangalore community on Livejournal. One wrong post (on the community) and you will be torn apart. They are like vultures waiting to attack. Its almost as if they are disappointed when somebody puts up a sensible post. Why this need to pick up fights? Why cant people live and let live? Why don't we have world peace? Okay, I don't want the answer to the last one I just wanted to fit 'world peace' somewhere in this post.

If everybody who got that mail just ignored it like I did, none of our mail boxes would have been flooded. I guess not everyone is like me. I guess if there were more people like me there would be world peace.

6 comments:

~RAUL~ said...

it's an age old idiotic thing and I hate it absolutely. These *****(lots of stars) have nothing else to do than trying to prove themselves. Silly people...

GuNs said...

Hmm...Live & let live, world peace....Profound words !!

Hope you practice them more and stop being so fish !!

LOL, I come across such characters all the time. This reply-all thing is a REAL bug-in-the-youknowwhat and someone oughtta do something about it soon. Whats more, sometimes you get caught in a cross fire where 2 (or more) people are abusing each other and you dont know any one of them !!

Good writeup. Follow it up with something on idiotic mail practices of people !

-PeAcE
--WiTh
---GuNs

Swathi Sambhani aka Chimera said...

i hate the using the Reply All button so much that even in case of work related mails where i need to use it, i do it only after a lot of hesitation.

n yes, lol on the World Peace n u

FlyingHigh said...

Swathi, yeah I hate it too..almost never use it!

Balaji Chitra Ganesan said...

hmm..good observation! Even more curiously blog comments by strangers (I mean people who do not know the blogger in person) tend to be more argumentative. In a way its a understandable too. If a person agrees with someone then there is less inclination/need to throw a line in agreement.

I think the practice of sending 'forwards' with previous sender/recipients addresses visible is also not good. If a person is so interested to forward, he/she could as well copy/paste the content and send it as new a mail!

Balaji.

GuNs said...

Hey Shradz,
No reply to my comment?