AUGH!! Stop emailing me, long-lost casual acquaintence!

[CanuckAmok]

I know this guy... a nice guy.

When I moved to the West Coast, we kept in touch via email. But he's one of those people who FWDs every single message he receives ("the differences between men and women", "celebrity-scandal-du-jour jokes", etc)... so, I was pleased to discover that when he got married, he stopped emailing so much...maybe twice per year, with a sincere "hello", or "Merry Christmas", or whatever.

Now we've reconnected, and it's like 15 messages a day, and sending huge files which fill my inbox (and today he even asked me to empty my box so he could send me something huge), and so-forth.

How can I politely say "enough, Darren!", without actually saying "enough, Darren!"?

Anyone else have this problem?

[K8-EEE]

1. I Usually Suffer Along, Delete Delete Delete

Oh, many, many nice people do this.

My main offender kind of got the point after a bit, where she was like, "you never comment on my emails" and I'm like, well, you know....I'm not big on that kind of stuff and that was that!!

Or you could say, "my computer is so slow, it's hard to open too many large files, so sorry! Hey why not print me out a hard copy though, and send it through the mail?"

Trust me, THEY WON'T!

[enigmatic]

2. Block his emails...

I've suffered through that, too..

[Wat_Tyler]

3. Fake death.

[CanuckAmok]

4. Ah, "Autobahn"! Nice.

I'm at the point of not having to fake the death. Oh, wait...you meant mine? I meant his.

[Wat_Tyler]

5. Either. Both. Whatever. If you fake yours,

make sure to e-mail him as your lawyer asking for a donation to help pay for the funeral.

Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn, I reckon.

[khashka]

6. Just say "enough, Darren"

Or the polite way

1) Tell him that you appreciate it but you get so much email and have so little time to read it that your box is backing up and bouncing, so it would be better if he didn't send stuff like that.

Feel free to exaggerate freely. This is a polite but a reasonably direct request.

2) In your emails to him, mention casually other people who send you stuff like that. In a sort of half exasperated/half mocking tone. Mention the enormous waste of bandwidth. Joke about newbies sending that stuff - real Internet people know better than to do that.

This is the more subtle but potentially more hurtful method.

3) Just tell him how you feel. Upfront. You like hearing from him but you don't like all this other stuff.

This is the mature approach. You know whether or not he can handle it.

4) As a last resort, kill file him. I don't know if your email software does that or not.


I'd try them in the order given. 1 and 2 in combination or serially usually handles the problem. 3 nips most of the worst offenders in the bud. 4 is absolutely fool proof but means that the friendship is over.

Khash.
been there, done that.