Walter Cronkinte dead

[kandrathe]

And people never stop emailing it to me.

I have friends and relatives that email me all the bad jokes the net has to offer, not crude, but often rude, racist, and politically biased crap. If I see a large attachment from some people, and depending on the subject, I just immediately move it to the memory hole without opening. No need for anger, just a little annoyed at the waste of bandwidth. When it is the "alert" types urban legend, I usually email back the relevant Snopes link debunking the silly crap. Politically, my family and friends range from extreme progressive to libertarian, to ultra conservative and most of them are not open to actually discussing alternative views. Sometimes, when they ask me, "Did you see that funny Bin Laden joke?" I can reply, "Sorry, I don't look at any of that stuff, I just delete it." They usually get the hint and take me off their spam list.

When I was younger I occasionally used to snap back at them, but now I just acknowledge that they still want to communicate with me, even if its just their "spam useless crap" group. I try to respond with a thoughtful, and serious "Hi, how's it going, I'm fine..." type letter and attach some current photo's of recent events at my house. I wish people would understand the netiquette of asking, "Do you want to be included in my spam?" before they assume you will laugh at all the jokes they pass your way. I mean, back when mail was the means of communicating, people did not go out and xerox a joke or comic to mail to their "spam" group. Or, maybe they did.