Email: An Octopus Taking Over People’s Lives (Or, Why That Person Never Emailed You Back)

 by Rachel Alexander  

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A great divide is growing between the people who receive large amounts of email and those who don’t. There is a disconnect between the “the sought-after people” (“SAPs”), who receive an unmanageable amount of email, and the “silent other people” (“SOPs”) who don't understand this phenomenon, surfing the Internet in relative anonymity.

The advent of email has come with mixed blessings. This advancement in technology has provided new and easier ways to find information, run the day-to-day activities of our daily lives, and communicate with others. However, along with those advancements has come - an easier way to communicate with others. Many people are becoming overwhelmed by the number of emails they receive, known as email saturation. This doesn't even take into account spam, which is blocked by most spam filters nowadays.

A great divide is growing between the people who receive large amounts of email and those who don't. The increase in email volume particularly affects famous people, politicians, and professionals who provide helpful information on the Internet, including computer techs. To make things easy, let's call them "the sought-after people" ("SAPs") as opposed to everyone else, the "silent other people" ("SOPs") who surf the Internet in relative anonymity. SAPs are finding that increasingly their free time is spent reading and responding to emails, and they are having a difficult time figuring out how to juggle emails. Whereas SOPs do not comprehend this new phenomenon, resulting in needless feelings that they are being snubbed or ignored. It has created more suspicion in marriages that spouses are purposely ignoring each other - when it's nothing more than email saturation.

Before email, in order to contact someone famous, particularly if they did not live in your town, it was necessary to call 411 or other phone directory service and hope that the person didn't have an unpublished number. Or, if they were listed, print out a letter and mail it to them. The only other option was to send a letter to the company or organization the person was affiliated with. Most people didn't make the effort to do any of that.

Now, anyone famous can be found with a simple Internet search from a home computer, and an email can be sent off within seconds. Famous people are flooded with emails from people all over the world on every subject fathomable - requesting their time at an event or interview, asking for a contribution to a charitable or political cause, requesting their advice, proposing business deals, asking them to put something on their website, long-lost relatives contacting them, fans or enemies harassing them, etc.

There is simply not enough time in the day for one person to respond to hundreds of emails. Most people work 40+ hours a week, and have barely enough time outside of work during the workweek to get much done except make dinner and watch the news, or maybe take the kids to an event or go out to dinner with friends. On the weekends, most people like to work on home improvements and get out of the house to do errands, attend church, or engage in leisure activities like boating. Increasingly, more people have jobs requiring them to sit in front of a computer screen all week long. The last thing they want to do is spend their entire weekend in front of a computer. The number of people suffering backaches from sitting at work too long in front of their computers has been increasing. Consequently, one way that is emerging to distinguish SOPs from SAPs is the presence of back pain.

Up until the early 1990's, when email first began spreading to the general public, people used to spend their leisure time balancing their activities - splitting time between family, friends, church, helping others, dating, pursuing hobbies, exercising, watching TV, talking on the phone, and enjoying the outdoors. Now, they have so many emails to respond to many of them have given up trying to prioritize these other activities in their lives - there's no time left after responding to 50 emails over a weekend. Emails frequently require more than just typing out a response - they can require research, phone calls, attending an event, drafting and typing something, and following up with continuing responsibilities, etc.

For every email a SAP answers, there are always five more equally as urgent. The suicidal friend met over the Internet. The business customer that thinks because they've done business with you, they can dump their emotional problems on you and ask you for free advice in your area of expertise. The friend of your parents from childhood who asks you to interfere in a proceeding to assist them. The guy you met at your last job who asks you to contribute $25 to his charity. The gal from church who was given your email address as someone who could help her with a problem. The person who asks you for special favors with the company you work for. Innumerable classmates you attended school with who can now easily find you on the Internet. The list is endless. Yet everyone a SAP ignores makes him feel guilty, and there's always the risk that someone could spread the word about him that he's flaky or rude - which could ultimately hurt his reputation and business.

People who don't receive large volumes of emails never stop to think that others may receive too many emails to respond to them all. They become offended if "Joe" does not respond to their email asking him for a favor, or give them his opinion on something. In reality, Joe receives 100 emails just like those a day from "friends." Plus another 100 general emails from organizations that have added him to their mailing lists, such as political organizations, which are generally not prohibited by law from doing so, unlike regular commercial spam. And yet another 100 emails are just forwarded emails Joe's friends send him. These friends think nothing of asking Joe when they see him whether he has read email #47 which they sent him last week, a lengthy article pontificating on the terrible state of grapes in Zimbabwe. Or the email they forwarded him which has been floating around the Internet for years as an Internet myth. Since Joe does not want to risk offending anyone or ruin any lucrative networking associations, he does not ask his "friends" to discontinue their emails. Instead, he opts for a third option - he allows their emails to go through to him, but he doesn't respond to them.

The spread of email has turned SAPs into everyone's accessible "friend." Suddenly, everyone thinks they are on a friendship level with SAPs, just because they have emailed them once. In reality, although it is interesting and flattering for SAPs to receive email from hundreds of people around the world, they are incapable of responding to or even reading every email they receive. It is physically impossible for one person to be friends with thousands of people around the world and maintain regular communication. Prioritizing emails means SAPs must first respond to emails from their employer, emails from family, and emails relating to their daily lives & career. These emails alone may take up several hours of a SAP's time each week. This leaves very little time for SAPs to read and respond to emails requesting favors or chitchat. It is unfair to expect people to spend all of their waking hours in front of their computer as some sort of slave to email.

Cell phones have exacerbated this problem. SOPs expect SAPs to respond to their phone calls quickly if they have cell phones. However, since SAPs are already overwhelmed with emails, they are stuck prioritizing again. Which means sometimes it makes more sense to respond to phone calls from "friends" with emails. It is less time-consuming to send a quick email to someone rather than call them back, particularly if the person likes to talk for awhile.

There is one popular new communication method SAPs have escaped so far; Internet chat messaging programs are not considered a necessity yet and so are avoidable. Hopefully they will stay this way - Internet chat is one of the biggest time-wasters ever invented. Of course, it is disturbing realizing that our younger generation has been raised on chat and is comfortable with wasting considerable hours glued to the computer screen chatting mindlessly instead of engaging in more productive activities.

The only hope is that technology will advance as quickly as the volume of email. Until then, SAPs overcome by email saturation should refer persistent SOPs to this article (set up a default response to emails sent to you that includes the url of this article - http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/email-an-octopus-taking-over-people%e2%80%99s-lives-or-why-that-person-never-emailed-you-back/).

This article was written for all the politicians, personalities, and professionals who have told me they are overwhelmed with emails in this era and the public doesn't understand.

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Politics: General, Culture: General, Econ. & Public Policy, Science, Technology, Energy

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