People who need to have the Internet taken away from them, Chap. LXXXVII

[katallison]

Consulting my calendar, I am reassured that we *are*, in fact, in the year 2006. By which time, I would have assumed, everyone with an e-mail account would have some minimal grasp of that arcane and mystic entity, The Listserv.

In which assumption I would be oh, so very wrong.

When I left work yesterday I had (*counting*) 17 messages littering my inbox, triggered by someone who mistakenly posted a class-reservation request to a listserv for people who work with the registrar database. Taken in sum, these messages represent a veritable cascade of The Stupid -- "I don't have anything to do with reservations!" "Why are you all sending me this?" "Please take me off this mailing list!"

But this morning brought the capper: someone who posted a message to the list (with an enormous gif-riddled two-inch-high sig block) saying, and I quote, "Some how all the emails I will now forward, came to me by error. How you can fix your listserv accordingly. Thank you." And, just as promised, this individual then forwarded ALL SEVENTEEN message back to the listserv.

I figure any day that begins this way can only get better.

Comments

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

Last spring, we had someone with a greivance arguing with the president of the union exchanging angry e-mails in which they called each other many stupid names over the entire Mpls. Public Schools Clerical Union listserv. There must have been 65 of them between the two of them and all of the people writing in to complain. We no longer have a listserv. we have a yahoo group. I am on no e-mail and love it.

[cereta.livejournal.com]

I had a listserv explode into one of those about two years ago. Good times.

[janet-carter.livejournal.com]

I feel bad for laughing so hard at this, but hee! And I was annoyed enough by a new school announcement list this semester with no daily digest option.

[brynwulf]

I figure any day that begins this way can only get better.

That would probably be a safe assumption. Can't wait to see you!!

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

Please take me off this mailing list. Why is my inbox being flooded with these messages from someone named Kat?

Thanks you.

[dsudis.livejournal.com]

Just a few days ago, the listserv for my graduate school had a flurry of PLEASE UNSUBSCRIBE messages, and replies to same, and replies to replies, and finally a reposting of listserv instructions, all of which I deleted with great glee and a certain sense of "Did you just return from 1994? WTF?"

[shearebliss.livejournal.com]

:giggles: I'm sorry to laugh, but you see, I belong to several genealogical mailing lists on a list server, and you cannot imagine how many times I see this happen there. :comforts:

And flame wars, my god, the genealogy list is even worse than fandom.

[vickita.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Yup. It's astounding, isn't it? Amazingly, this happens all of the time on some IEEE lists that I'm on. These are, ostensibly, electrical engineers. You'd think they'd have a clue. But no.

On the positive side, I am on a Yahoo Groups list for the North Texas Irish Festival, and recently someone who was subbed to the list had set up an automated vacation response on his email, with the inevitable result. One post to the list generated the automated response, which went out to the list, which generated an automated response...

I put myself on "no mail" and waited for the inevitable flurry of angry and/or confused posts, each generating its *own* automated response.

But it didn't happen. Not. one. person. piped up. (Pun intended, heh.) And the list mod suspended the guy's subscription, and all was well.

Amazing.

[planetalyx.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God. Can we break his fingers?

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Thank you for making me feel better about the fact that my ISP is not giving me my email this morning. Maybe it's for the best, really, in this best of all possible Internets.

[goes to see if the mail is back up, yet, anyway]

[mlyn.livejournal.com]

ROTF.

[chickwriter.livejournal.com]

People are beyond amusing.


/sarcasm