4 ms·

E-mail is currently useless for me. people have been talking about going through and unsubscribing from things. NOT counting the spam folder i have 52,541 unr

E-mail is currently useless for me. people have been talking about going through and unsubscribing from things. NOT counting the spam folder i have 52,541 unread emails. I am not going through all of that to click a bajillion unsubscribes considering i never actually chose to receive email from 99% of the people / companies sending me email. I'd forgotten about the whitelist strategy. I'd written it off as obnoxious to the sender, but as i am reminded of this years later i'm thinking it's more obnoxious for me to never respond to people, partially because i miss their emails, and partially i don't bother looking most of the time because there's too damn much to deal with.

CogitoCogito 8y ago
Mark all old mail read and start over today? Just unsubscribe going forward.
- masukomi 8y ago
  the strategy of continuing to unsubscribe from things is based on the flawed idea that i want to opt-in to an ongoing maintenance task for the rest of my life. I do not. We shouldn't just _accept_ the idea that other people / companies can assign us ongoing unpaid work for the rest of our lives.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    >We shouldn't just _accept_ the idea that other people / companies can assign us ongoing unpaid work for the rest of our lives. This is exactly my perspective as well - I even said in another comment "I don't want to do this for the rest of my life". Reading the comments, it is clear not everyone has assigned the same roles to email as I have (which is understandable). For some people, opt in as a default seems to be acceptable. I don't know - perhaps because I had email for some years without getting all these emails, I may simply have a different reference point than many who grew up at a time when communicating individually over email was the rare use case (as opposed to being notified of sales, meetings, etc). (Note: Definitely not complaining or being sarcastic here - to each their own).
    - BuckRogers 8y ago
      I have a different solution, while I unsubscribe from mailers that I know I signed up for, when I have messages that I don't trust to verify my email address with a response (potentially getting more spam) OR I'm feeling lazy (even with services I've signed up for), I just hit the spam button in Gmail. That's a cheap and easy unsubscribe. I very rarely check my spam box, only when I'm job hunting as that's very critical I don't miss anything.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    It's a public bi-directional communication tool that can be initiated from either side. If you don't want that then don't use email.
  - CogitoCogito 8y ago
    Okay sure I don't like the status quo, but I was just telling you something that's actionable. If you have a strategy to change the email ecosystem, by all means work to do so. But until then what I told you to do is at least something you can start doing today. It'll also solve your problem more effectively than complaining about it on HN.

CogitoCogito 8y ago

Mark all old mail read and start over today? Just unsubscribe going forward.

masukomi 8y ago
the strategy of continuing to unsubscribe from things is based on the flawed idea that i want to opt-in to an ongoing maintenance task for the rest of my life. I do not. We shouldn't just _accept_ the idea that other people / companies can assign us ongoing unpaid work for the rest of our lives.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >We shouldn't just _accept_ the idea that other people / companies can assign us ongoing unpaid work for the rest of our lives. This is exactly my perspective as well - I even said in another comment "I don't want to do this for the rest of my life". Reading the comments, it is clear not everyone has assigned the same roles to email as I have (which is understandable). For some people, opt in as a default seems to be acceptable. I don't know - perhaps because I had email for some years without getting all these emails, I may simply have a different reference point than many who grew up at a time when communicating individually over email was the rare use case (as opposed to being notified of sales, meetings, etc). (Note: Definitely not complaining or being sarcastic here - to each their own).
  - BuckRogers 8y ago
    I have a different solution, while I unsubscribe from mailers that I know I signed up for, when I have messages that I don't trust to verify my email address with a response (potentially getting more spam) OR I'm feeling lazy (even with services I've signed up for), I just hit the spam button in Gmail. That's a cheap and easy unsubscribe. I very rarely check my spam box, only when I'm job hunting as that's very critical I don't miss anything.
- manigandham 8y ago
  It's a public bi-directional communication tool that can be initiated from either side. If you don't want that then don't use email.
- CogitoCogito 8y ago
  Okay sure I don't like the status quo, but I was just telling you something that's actionable. If you have a strategy to change the email ecosystem, by all means work to do so. But until then what I told you to do is at least something you can start doing today. It'll also solve your problem more effectively than complaining about it on HN.