Modern Day Hydra

I had had enough. E-mail used to be a mostly pleasant experience, looking forward to who would write to me today, offering either that little token of continued friendship, that exciting invitation to lead a workshop, that answer to some arrangement that needed making. Like all of us humans hungry for connection, I felt excitement when the mail dropped through the slot and then later, when the grinding gears of the computer ended with “You’ve got mail!” and finally, when I now just click swiftly and silently to see what awaits me. 

 

Whether it was the mail slot or AOL (yep, still a loyal member!), there was always a certain percentage of junk mail and bills and let’s face it, it almost outnumbered the more welcome kind. But since the need these last four years to step up my political involvement combined with the ease of groups sharing addresses, suddenly I noticed that for every mail I actually cared to read, there were 10 to 15 that I didn’t even want to open. And so my daily  e-mail routine began with “delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete—repeat.”

 

A comedian once talked about going to parties and getting stuck in boring conversations and suddenly realizing, “Wait a second! I just realized that you’re boring and I’ve got legs!” And so in that spirit, it struck me:  “Hey! I can unsubscribe!!”

 

And so began my campaign. It took longer than deleting, but the perk was that in the future, I’d have very few junk e-mails to deal with. Makes sense, yes? 

 

And yet three days into my campaign, I seem to be getting just as many, if not more. Do these companies take revenge and turn your address over to ten more to punish you? It feels like the modern day equivalent of the old Greek hydra, that many-headed serpent with nine heads that preyed on people. If you cut of one of its heads, two more would immediately grow back. What to do?

 

Stay with me and I’ll report back. That is, unless you unsubscribe from my Blog. Then you’ll get twice as many.