You are the master of your own destiny. Life may be thrust upon you, but you have a weapon. You have the Excalibur of the digital age…
You control DELETE!
Unsolicited emails?
I recently got an unsolicited email from a fellow programmer who had done something cool.
He made some excellent videos on programming here: http://hillelcoren.com/coder/
When I first saw this email in my inbox, I thought perhaps it might be some kind of SPAM, but I decided to take a look anyway and found something that was really pretty awesome.
Later, I learned that Hillel had been chapped by some of the people he had sent out emails to, specifically those in the academic field. Quite a shame.
Here is an email he got back that he shared with me:
I've never heard of you, or the people recommending your video.
Spamming is spamming. You're no different than any other idiot who
thinks his message is too important to exercise restraint in
self-promotion. You want people to look at your video, and to hell with
their email privacy rights. That's not the attitude we should be
conveying to our students.
Stay out of my inbox.
It was kind of like this:
At first I agreed a bit with him, but then I realized an incredible power I possessed, a power that every one of us possesses.
The POWER of DELETE!
So, something shows up in your email inbox you don’t like.
What should you do about it?
Should you cry about it?
Should you pretend like someone is putting a gun to your head forcing you to click a link?
Should you imagine that the curtains of your inbox have been torn asunder exposing your naked email body to the world?
How about if you just check the email and click delete?
The point is, you aren’t going to change the world telling everyone what proper etiquette for email is.
Even if you could, would it really be for the better?
I get lots of unsolicited emails
I respond to almost every one of them.
Sure I’ll check out your website.
Sure I’ll answer this quick question for you.
Why the heck not?
I’ve made friends and learned quite a bit from responding to random emails from people I don’t know.
I guess the point I am trying to make is this:
- If you get an email you don’t like, just delete it, you have the power.
- Take a chance, reward others for taking chances, there are enough critics in the world, we are all just people. Let's try to have a good time and help each other.
