Thursday, November 13, 2008

Breaking News: People Are Sorta Dumb

This morning I received a message from my alma mater saying that they would be eliminating 10% of their workforce at the end of the year due to the immense financial crisis/depression/recession/whathaveyou. Most of the jobs cut would be through retiring personnel, so that is good, I guess. The disturbing thing was that people freaked out about getting the email, and not the content. It was sent to a list containing every email address the school had for alumni. When the first person replied in sympathy, she generated a shit storm of morons replying to the message in exaperation about getting two emails. This continued for 21 more messages.

I found this whole situation hilarious. College graduates comfortable with Crackberries and iPhones are freaking out right now, trying to tell everyone to stop cluttering their email inboxes. Yet these same people can't figure out from the email info that the message came from a list and that they are sending their messages to a list and not to any one person in particular. Two people replied with words other than "STOP HITTING REPLY!! OMG!!!!!!!" and "GET ME OFF THIS LIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

These two replies explained how to stop the emails and one also said that they were glad that the alumni had maintained their sense of humor. I couldn't exactly let the day go by without tossing a little gasoline on a fire...

10 comments:

Adorable Girlfriend said...

This is why I drop about $5K to the Univ. of Massachusetts, $2K to Amherst College and Columbia University annually, and continue to pay tuition at GWU and UPenn... they heart AG and do not put me on the mailing lists. It's amazing how if you give money -- they listen to your requests so as to get future monies.

Seriously, give money and get something for it: a spam free e-mail box.

I am so over the hatred of giving alumni dollars. I really am.

fish said...

Seriously, how stupid was the university to not have the email go out as individual mails from a list instead of a bulk email like that?

Amateurs.

Anonymous said...

So the IT department was the first to see the cuts?

Kathleen said...

that is comedy.

teh l4m3 said...

I know that whenever I forward chain e-mails, I also thank the sender and reply to all.

If I don't, I risk my cat's contracting leukemia.

Snag said...

It would be really sad if you used your new email list for evil purposes. Really, really sad.

Anonymous said...

This email exchange was perhaps the funniest I've seen in a while. My favorite was when people hit "reply all" to tell people to STOP HITTING REPLY ALL.

Gotta love our College.

Anonymous said...

AG, thanks for lovin' the UMass.

signed, a po' 'lumni.

Anonymous said...

I do it for the shiksa appeal with you, MDH. And yet, nothing.

Sigh.

They need it more than Amherst and Columbia. Hence, why they get more. AG is no slouch like others. If everyone just gave $10...

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

"Sorta"?