This immediate follow-up is a month later. In last month’s worrying episode, I realised loads of electronic messages clogged up my digital arteries. All of these messages were read. Most had been dealt with.
And yet. There they sat, waiting for some beam of light to land upon them before they would shift into nothingness.
Over 300 messages. By the end of the blog post, I’d erased just over half. How did I fare, after that? What’s the update? I ditched another 100 or so, since then. That’s the stockpile.
I was on top of a hell of a lot more than that, as new messages poured in.
I’ll read new messages as soon as I can. Deal with them when able. Then delete what I don’t need. Roughly 50 messages lingered all month, between blog posts. But not the same 50. Gradually,
I eliminated the overflow from the old dusty e-mail tributaries. New material arrived.
And I was determined not to let the iceberg form all over again. On a daily basis, I took a flamethrower to the slow formation of ice. What’s left? Around 50 e-mails, all read, all waiting for
the stream of fire that will delete them. And these are official or semi-official messages.
Something comes up. I read the scribble. Make a response. Now I wait a few days for a government department to sort things out. Or I take in a parcel, and check it twice. Parcel received. Delete parcel
delivery message. That’s where I am, right this minute…
I don’t know how may blog followers receive an e-mail notification when I post these online. How many e-mail messages do you send out, next to the ones you receive? Depends on the time of year.
It’s winter. December. There are a lot of festive sales.
Those mean a great deal to companies. So much so, that I receive a lone festive e-mail from companies that never bother their arses to contact me at any other time. I bought a thing from the company
once, and that was it. At least they aren’t bombarding me with adverts.
Of course, I get that advert line at the top when I check on my e-mails. I could banish it by upgrading for money. But it is a minor inconvenience. It’s not something I ever click on accidentally.
Must be careful. Lately, a few spam messages evaded the filters. That’s a constant war.
The filter picks up a new trend, though. M.e.s.s.a.g.e.s separated by dots. Is that to evade the spam filter? Just makes all your fraudster e-mails look like they were put together by incompetent
ten-year-olds. Competent ten-year-olds are far better at spamming.
What’s the worst sort of e-mail? The government one put out by a department of people who didn’t think it through. You know the sort. Hello, we are a genuine government department and not scammers, honest, guv’nor. I remove myself from the presence of the offending message, and check the official website independently.
Oh, fuck. The message was real.
E-mail nonsense does occur at the other end. It’s not all about receiving messages and dealing with them. Give us your e-mail to enter this site and we’ll set up an account for you. Or sign in with your e-mail. Then you are judged. Harshly. In the meanest light.
When…
You type in the first character of your e-mail address, and the site rejects your activity.
That’s not an e-mail address we recognise. Please type the full address: more than one character. We’ve been set up to respond this way in a hateful manner, but we don’t
hate you personally. No. We treat everyone this way. Unless, of course, you copied and pasted your e-mail across in one go. In that case, we have a separate, more cutting, response. It’s in red ink, too. But also, emboldened,
italicised, and underlined. Y’know. For emphasis. But we’ll spare you that here.
The electronic message. A lone thundercloud that sometimes develops into a massive weather system. If I see six new e-mails at once, it means six companies e-mailed me at once. Or one sent me variations
on a theme six times over. This isn’t something that happens in the physical world, unless it is in the run-up to Christmas.
Only at Christmas would you receive six letters through the letterbox in the one posting. Festive greetings cards, all. Maybe, on one of those blue moons, a government body will spool out six flavours
of the same message across six envelopes. Helps with cost-cutting, you understand.
If it isn’t your e-mail, it’ll be texts. As I type this, it looks as though the whole of Scotland just got put on blast over a ban on prescribing sedatives for fear of flying. This has
been on the go for quite a while, but the text messages are in full flow now that winter rolled in. We were all warned about this in the summer. Or what passes for summer.
The communication that went away is that of the door-to-door sales dogsbody. First the internet killed it. Then the Covid Pandemic put the final nail in the coffin. We don’t, as a rule, resort
to the seance for further chatter. I’ve had few random telephone calls…
A concerned gentleman, hoping to connect with his lady love. And a drunk woman, who thought it was talk like a parrot day. This is associated with talking like a pirate, but for people who are more pissed. I’m off the blocks like an Olympic sprinter when it comes to terminating drunken wrong
number calls and barring the pissed offender.
It’s quick, too, to hang up on the call that warns my visa is up for renewal and that I may be deported. From Scotland. Where I live. As a citizen. I would laugh more at this, but the irritable
Chinese robot lady reading from a script is ALWAYS the irritable Chinese robot lady reading from a script. I never reach the bit about handing over my bank account. The blocked number is one digit away from the previous blocked
number. Eventually, the calls stopped. Why? Because they knew I’d been deported by then. Obviously.
Where’s the problem? It’s a dud company selling through Amazon. You don’t receive the goods, and Amazon refunds you. I’m sure Amazon is perfect when it comes to securing your
information. Strip-mining information was never the dud company’s intent. I’m sure they really wanted to undercut everyone else on price when you were buying that thing.
Can’t lay the blame at Amazon’s door. Not solely. People you know get caught up in this stuff, and their address book is plundered in some online chicanery. It’s so hard to tell
fake from real, now. That’s why I have to quintuple-check shady-looking government messages that are, lamentably, the real deal.
Interrupted by an Amazon delivery, which set off a blast of e-mail deletions. The trouble is ordering things based on price. Separate orders. One voucher per purchase. Okay. Split the voucher purchases
up. Separate order e-mails. Then separate e-mails again to say your parcel is on the way. If Amazon decides not to be your delivery agent on the final mile of the journey, that triggers another wave of messages from Royal
Mail at best and Yodel at worst.
Followed by yet another tidal surge, telling you all these things are delivered tomorrow. And another wave the next day, telling you it’ll be here today. Unless there’s a delay. More ripples
in the water. And then the delivery e-mails. Once the package is safely in your hands and it works, it is time to delete e-mails.
But. Things bundled in a purchase aren’t always bundled in a big box for convenience. One or two items will reach you at a later date. Sifting through messages, I seek an earlier time. There
never was one. The internet made shopping more convenient, and not less so.
A mountain of e-mail messages. Blown up, cliff face by cliff face, as delivery drivers arrive in rain. Looks as though one package has gone astray. Perhaps that’ll be fixed. I have a two-hour
slot. Interrupted by another delivery driver. These guys are growing wetter and wetter by the second in driving rain.
Luckily, everything in the parcel was wrapped in plastic. The parcel itself, which I intend to recycle, took a pure battering over the course of the time it took the guy to reach the door. I’ll
have to dry the empty parcel out before it can be prepared to meet its ultimate fate: recycling. But I don’t want to create a small bin of mush. So, the parcel waits in front of a radiator.
Just as I wait for an extra parcel delivery driver. My interruption there was, itself, interrupted by the news that the stray parcel is on its way. Nine stops to go. Well. That should consume the
rest of the two-hour slot. In the meantime, I must again tackle the deletion of at least one e-mail…
Seventeen e-mails later. That was infuriating, as some e-mails have to stay in place, even though one item on a two-item list has been delivered. Still waiting on that other item. The details have
been obscured for reasons of privacy. It is a spy book. Does Amazon routinely not show the cover of a spy book? Is that itself a form of cover?
Last month, I had over 300 e-mails, all read, waiting in the train station on a branch line train that was never coming. This month, I am firing rocket launchers at everything, as fast as I can muster.
How many messages did I delete today? The day isn’t over until the fat lady sings. Or until a soaking driver hands over the last lump of sopping-wet cardboard.
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