Junk e-mail, junk e-mailers, junk thinking and junk defensiveness

I can’t really do anything about spammers and bots sending me e-mails about Viagra, hot stocks or Christian home loans, other than raising the security level on my various e-mail accounts and programs.

I can, though, respond to real people who send me junk e-mails of various types. That includes urban legends, today is so terrible compared to the 1950s or similar types of shinola.

And I do. It vents my frustration with such people as well as giving me positive pleasure to exercise my powers of memory and logical reasoning, depending on whether I more refuting non-factual statements the e-mailer uses as argument warrants, or illogical connections.

And I hit the Send All command.

I don’t care if people up the chain get bitchy with me. That includes today, when I got a “good old days” e-mail at the office that was bloated with myth, including:
1. People drank while they were pregnant back then and nothing happened;
2. We drove kids in cars without seat belts and nothing happened;
3. We had lead all around, with our children exposed, and nothing happened, etc.

I responded:
1. I grew up near the Navajo Reservation — I’ve seen the results of fetal alcohol syndrome.
2. My sister needed facial stitching after my mom had a fender-bender while driving a 1965 Rambler;
3. Poor children across the country were damaged with reduced IQs by exposure to lead paint, more concentrated exposure to leaded gasoline, and as here in Dallas, living next to a lead smelter.

Anyway, the person in the first link of sending the e-mail in the first place, three levels of response above where I got it, eventually got it back, as somebody did send it up the chain to him.

He then e-mailed the original sender and CC’ed me, calling me a nutjob and accusing me of wasting company e-mail privilege and time, while asking if my boss knew of this.

I first pointed out that his friend was the nutjob for sending it in the first place. I then observed that both his e-mail address and his friend’s were on company e-mail. I third pointed out that as a newspaper editor, it’s part of my job to get facts straight. I added that I take personal pleasure in doing so with urban legend-type e-mails as well as it being part of my job.

In light of things like this, I’m tempted to have something like the following as my e-mail signature, on office as well as personal e-mail. It would go out the first time I ever e-mail back to a first-time contact person.

Do not send me junk e-mail. By that, I do not mean ads for Viagra, etc. I do mean urban legends e-mails, “America was better in the good old days” e-mails, conspiracy thinking e-mails or political conspiracy e-mails. Given that I am a newspaper editor, please note that any political e-mail, if it lacks factual basis or is grossly illogical, falls under this category.