Am I the only one who doesn’t want to click on a video for some information? I do not want to have to watch a video to find out information. I’d rather go to the dentist! When you tell me you are going to give me information, then give it. Don’t make me sit through a video that I will never finish in the first place.
Call me old-fashioned. I just have better things to do than watch a video unless it’s a movie. I’d much rather read it. If I need to stop reading for whatever reason, I can pick back up right where I left off.
The number of pop-up ads for things, even e-mail, has gotten to the maddening point. I do not want to have my reading interrupted by aggravating ads. If I want to check something out to buy, I will do it on my time. Having an advertisement pop up on an email or when reading something, does not entice me to buy whatever the product is at the time.
In fact, it makes me only want to not buy it. I make mental notes about those ads to make sure I never am tempted to buy it.
I also don’t like every store asking for your email or phone number. I receive more than enough emails on an everyday basis and I don’t need anymore, unless you are going to give me an insane amount of rewards or money.
Whenever I try to unsubscribe to some emails, it seems they multiply. I’m not sure how or why I get some of these emails in the first place.
For the record, I don’t do chain emails and unless I am personally involved or need the information for a story, you don’t have to Cc me to keep me in the loop. I think the people who send all these emails should pay me to send them to me. I’m sure that would eliminate quite a few of the unnecessary ones. They are obviously wanting to get my attention, so why not pay me for it. That’s one way for me to pay attention. My time is just as valuable as the next person’s and when I have to spend extra time deleting unwanted emails, I feel I have wasted some time which I can’t get back. I am my own personal assistant and time is valuable.
Perhaps the fee pay system could also be applied to text messages because I get a number of them as well. I’m sure I probably signed up for it, not thinking about it. However, one here and there may be fine but several a week is not. The point is not to make money off emails you don’t want to read, but to get the sender to think more about why they are sending the email and whether or not it is relevant enough to send to me. After all, it’s a form of advertisement and should be paid for by the sender.
I have my spam filter set high and I do not receive notifications from any social media site in my email. Still, I have to sort through 100s a day. One study I read said we are now getting 30% more emails than a few years ago. While I do not open all of them, it still takes time to highlight or check the unwanted ones so they can be deleted.
These days, we can even check our email from our phones which can only take up more precious time for some people. They not only become addicted to social media, they become addicted to checking their email.
I keep praying all this madness will stop. It overloads our brains with too much information. It’s no wonder so many people are having trouble sleeping and seem stressed all the time.
For work, I have to check emails several times a day before deadline to make sure we get everything in that came in on time and needs to go that week. People also send work stuff to my personal email because we have had problems with work email from time to time. I actually have two personal emails and we have three work emails. So part of our time is spent on sifting through emails. Spam filters do help but not enough.
Recently, I had to get another phone because mine died and could not be fixed. I’m still learning the new one, but one feature it has is that if I’m driving and someone sends me a text, it automatically responds letting them know I’m driving and will get back with them later. I think we need something like that on our emails. Perhaps filters could be set up for each person or place we receive emails from and the computer would automatically respond accordingly.
For unsolicited sales emails, the response could be “not interested, never will be interested, so it’s a waste to send me an email. Thank you.”
For other unsolicited emails perhaps the response could be “if I wanted you to send me email, I would have asked you to, so please stop. Thank you.”
We think we want simpler lives but if that is true, we have only made them more complicated with some of today’s technology.
Email is a great communication tool but it can get out of hand if not kept in check. Spam doesn’t filter everything correctly and many get through.
Perhaps all of that will change one day. Until that time I’m just going to unplug for a little while and then get back at it. Blessings. ©2017

VICTORIA SIMMONS is an author, columnist, motivational speaker, minister and publisher of The Georgia Post/Byron Buzz. Contact her at: vsimmons54@gmail.com