What are your parents emailing you?

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Wed May 13, 2020 9:49 am

In addition to shoes.

My dad emails me SO MANY articles. Often several a day. Today he emailed me a livejournal link that he thought I should check out.

I love it when he forwards me an article directly from his email and I get to see his targeted advertising throughout it for like retirement calculator services. Seeing other people's targeted advertising is like looking into someone else's sock drawer.

alexshred420 · Post by **alexshred420** » Wed May 13, 2020 10:18 am

Pictures of me and my brother as babies that I've never seen before. I think he must've found in my grandma's house a few years ago and now he's getting around to scanning? Pretty cool actually.

willowowow · Post by **willowowow** » Wed May 13, 2020 10:22 am

Articles from the Irish Times, and photos from his daily hikes in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where he lives. Entire message in the subject line. "Gorgeous day in Grizzly Gulch, removed debris from the trail, big family of big horn sheep. Love you! Dad."

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Wed May 13, 2020 10:43 am

Entire message in the subject line: YES!

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Wed May 13, 2020 11:00 am

Lol I’m deleting this bc it felt too emo

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Wed May 13, 2020 11:08 am

"I think he just likes broadcasting" is a very cool insight/concept!

Not using contacts????!!!! I bet you could see Lady Gaga on Youtube!!
I get that this is aggravating but I wish I was in this loop, because your dad is a real delight. Remember when he and Ilyas became great friends at that holiday party by just kind of grinning and laughing at each other and shouting god knows what over the hubbub? He's a very incredible social creature.
I wonder if any famous people get forwarded emails by you.

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Wed May 13, 2020 11:23 am

Lol I'm sure they do. I would love to know what they make of them. I'm sure they just delete them, as I immediately delete all the emails from his old drinking buddies.

Yes, he's a powerful social animal, it's true. He just loves people and is interested in everything/everyone. I do remember when he and Ilyas randomly fell in love at that party, it was so funny and cool. I mean it's incredible how much my parents are involved in my life/know all my friends. They've always been that way. One time in college I came back to my dorm room and Katy was like "your dad sent me an Indigo Girls CD today." Another time I was on tour with Wolf Colonel and we were playing at The Smell in LA and suddenly Jason was like "is that your dad??" and it was--he'd flown to LA to come to my weird punk show and surprise me. Literally the entire audience at that show was just the other band on the bill, my dad, my aunt Molly, and one of the aforementioned famous people. And we played our set at The Smell and they were like "That was really interesting!" Another time my parents were in Portland and I wasn't, and they threw a party for all of MY friends, without me being there. They just invited a bunch of my friends, lots of people from non-intersecting friend groups even, and cooked spaghetti and everyone had a blast and they sent me pictures.

My parents rule!!!! And also I am stressed out on a deep level by my dad's email habits!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HELP

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Wed May 13, 2020 11:24 am

I'm sorry I derailed this thread with my personal Oedipal drama or whatever you'd call it

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Wed May 13, 2020 12:23 pm

DERAILED?? Are you kidding? This is pure GOLD.

I don't even know where to begin to respond. I thought my dad sending me a seperate email for each word, phrase or emoji that would normally be a text message or signing every facebook response, "love, dad" was pretty outrageous/adorable. But the stakes have been raised beyond any level I thought possible.
I mean truly, this??!? {"can you text me the picture I texted you yesterday? I want to send it to someone else." And I'll say "it's right here in this very text thread, dad, just scroll up" and he'll say "I deleted it" and so I just text it back to him because I don't want to deal with it, only to receive it as a text again the next day.}

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Wed May 13, 2020 2:27 pm

Additionally, an email from my dad might be just a forwarded picture of a funny sign in a bodega window, but the bottom of his email is literally NINE lines of titles, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers and emails followed by two entire paragraphs of fine print detailing privacy codes of which, two entire lines are just listing names of states.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Wed May 13, 2020 3:29 pm

My mom forwards me 3-5 articles per day from the French newspaper Le Monde. I have no idea how she does this, but they all arrive to my inbox deeply broken. One theory I have is that she reads the articles via an email digest she receives, and rather than send me the URL to the article she simply copies and pastes the URL that is currently in the toolbar when she’s using her web-based Gmail client. If this is the case it’s truly a miracle than I’m able to read any of the articles. These are usually followed up by a “did your read it?!” text so I have to Google the subject of the article and try to find it online so that I can, in fact, read it. She’s also recently started using WhatsApp to communicate with friends in Europe and now suddenly is sending me French memes for the first time ever, which is honestly a delight & I have no idea where she’s getting them.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Wed May 13, 2020 3:31 pm

My mom also emails me full-resolution photos directly from iPhoto, which (god forgive me) I delete after viewing, because my own gmail inbox has been 100% full for three years and I refuse to give Google money for more storage

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Thu May 14, 2020 12:56 am

I have spent some quar time, googling tips on how to get my gmail inbox to deflate. It is helpful! I have had my lil' gmail account since [mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] sent me a beta invite in 2004.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu May 14, 2020 8:03 am

What are your tips? This is what I do:

Search my inbox for “has:attachment larger than:1mb” and delete anything I don’t care about

Search my inbox for words like “unsubscribe” and “noreply” and delete old receipts and mailing lists and various other unsolicited dreck

Delete emails from my parents that have a million giant photo attachments

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu May 14, 2020 8:05 am

The ludicrous thing is I HAVE another email address I’ve been trying to transition to for 2+ years but like you I’ve had gmail since 2004 and god knows how many accounts and profiles it’s connected to

astral hellion · Post by **astral hellion** » Thu May 14, 2020 8:19 am

I did the slash & burn w/r/t gmail: went through & deleted all the emails from people I’m no longer friends with & will most likely never speak to again in my life.

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Thu May 14, 2020 8:36 am

Yeah, I mean that is basically it. Delete lots of attachments. If you don't want to get rid of the memory. Download the files and delete the emails.

In addition to searching "noreply" I'll also do a search for stuff like "nytimes" or "youtube" or whatever other stuff might secretly be filling the void. "Monster.com!" Get that shit gone.

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Thu May 14, 2020 4:42 pm

My partner's mom just emailed me a full-sized image straight from iPad, of a bird taking a bath in their yard. This is what it looks like in my email:

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu May 14, 2020 5:12 pm

Hell yeah

willowowow · Post by **willowowow** » Thu May 14, 2020 5:52 pm

[mention]astral hellion[/mention] I am impressed by your ruthlessness! There are many emails in the categories you describe that I would LOVE to erase forever but I'm too chicken to even bring them up on my screen to do so! See also boxes upon boxes of letters sent to me in college etc., and also old journals.

astral hellion · Post by **astral hellion** » Thu May 14, 2020 6:37 pm

[mention]willowowow[/mention] it is very ruthless & completely satisfying, though terrifying to contemplate, like standing on the edge of a high dive! I will say that upon select perusal, I truly never needed to read those missives again.
I also burned all my journals before I moved away from Portland & I have nary a regret; I think that the fire was key to my resolve.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu May 14, 2020 8:28 pm

21st century punk!

Post by **joni** » Thu May 14, 2020 8:51 pm

Love these slash and burn methods [mention]astral hellion[/mention].

My dad only texts me links to articles about how artists like us are specially fucked in the pandemic. No thoughts, no questions, no conversation, just the links and then unrelated stuff about my nephew that he mostly takes care of.

infopetal · Post by **infopetal** » Thu May 14, 2020 9:18 pm

yourfriendclaire wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 3:31 pm My mom also emails me full-resolution photos directly from iPhoto, which (god forgive me) I delete after viewing, because my own gmail inbox has been 100% full for three years and I refuse to give Google money for more storage

time to give FASTMAIL your money. they've earned it. employee owned since 2010!

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Fri May 15, 2020 4:38 am

I ALSO BURNED MY JOURNALS BEFORE A BIG MOVE! I got my PhD and then we moved from Iowa back to Portland and I suddenly was like, why am I lugging these boxes full of inane thoughts around with me my entire life? I'm hardly Virginia Woolf, what am I doing, these aren't interesting. And I actually didn't burn them, I took them AND THREW THEM INTO A DUMPSTER. Felt great.

I love a grand cleansing gesture. I also deleted all my tweets one time out of nowhere. Love hitting "select all-delete" on a thing. It feels SO good. Look, you are still here, still alive, still yourself! You didn't need all that shit!

That said I did immediately continue keeping a journal and now they are piling up again. What is the journaling impulse? It's very weird.

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Fri May 15, 2020 8:11 am

Throwing journals in a dumpster is professional-grade MOVING ON. I am proud of you, dumpers!
I feel like most of my journals have disappeared along this long and winding road. It has been pretty anticlimactic. I'd venture to say though, that a fair amount of my "journaling" has probably been done "at people" via this gmail account I've had for nigh on 16 years...

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Fri May 15, 2020 9:20 am

I dumped them too, and it felt great! I dumped journals, notes, and letters from middle school all the way through my mid twenties, as well as all of the art made during those times. Felt absolutely amazing, I still get a thrill thinking about it!

Phil · Post by **Phil** » Fri May 15, 2020 12:51 pm

I for one am really enjoying revisiting my archives and journals and am finding them full of useful and enlightening information. Sure, I love to prune and burn the past ruthlessly, but the elements that survive the cleansing fires are truly worth saving, at least for my remaining little blip on earth.

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Fri May 15, 2020 3:26 pm

For me it was a youth thing. Like, those weren't super joyful or productive years of my life and having so much of that stuff around made me feel burdened by that vibe, even though life is joyful and productive now. I still have some bits and bobs but am grateful to not ever re-read those journals. I won't forget, but also good riddance.

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Sat May 16, 2020 10:24 am

I live with my mom

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sat May 16, 2020 11:21 am

My mom sent me Bill Maher rant about re-opening the economy that made me really sad :/

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Sat May 16, 2020 11:41 am

Evan.V.N.S.J. · Post by **Evan.V.N.S.J.** » Tue May 26, 2020 1:52 pm

I just got a very incredible email from my mom, who has apparently been doing some genealogical research, that was this single line:

Hi Ev, this is the ancestor born in Scotland who immigrated to Canada. He died in Montreal in 1902.

with a picture attached. I really wish these were the only kind of emails I had to read from anyone. Just the facts.

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Wed May 27, 2020 8:01 am

Lucky.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:47 am

Today my mom forwarded me an article in the French press about my most narcissistic and insufferable relative, my cousin Chloé, who has over the last eight months become a leading figure in Europe's anti-mask/anti-vaxx movement. The article was the first in a multi-part investigation written by a French journalist who had infiltrated my cousin's organization. My cousin lives in Geneva and is educated and ostensibly intelligent. She's been a high school math teacher for years. She posted a batshit video on Facebook around the beginning of the pandemic in which she hypothesized about how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was planning on implanting surveillance nano-chips into human beings under the guise of a COVID vaccine. It got a huge amount of traction and now she runs her own "news" organization focusing on COVID, 5G, Satanism and paedophilia, which I guess makes her European Q-Anon...?It's really upsetting and weird.

alexshred420 · Post by **alexshred420** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 1:21 pm

[mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] Wait did your cousin INVENT the Gates 5G chips in the vaccine conspiracy?? That's a big one. I even have a couple lefty-hippie friends that believe that, or some version of it. It's so ridiculous.

The sucky thing is is that there _might_ actually be health risks to 5G, but because there's so much fraught conspiracy shit around it, no reasonable person wants to talk about it. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... g-is-safe/ (opposing thoughts here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... lth-risks/)

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 1:55 pm

[mention]alexshred420[/mention] Honestly no idea. I really don't think so. She might have been the first person to start pushing that particular idea in Europe, but Satanist computer chip stuff has to come originally from the American evangelical fringe, right? I don't have the energy to parse this stuff. Have you seen how bonkers some of the Q infographics are???

https://www.are.na/block/8835364

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 2:04 pm

But yeah, that's sort of the thing with conspiracies, as I understand them...they're wildly exaggerated, sideways extrapolations of things that are kinda true or rooted in some truth, which effectively invalidates and undermines the truth by making it appear fringe. I'm sure there's scholarship about this. Like it's boggling how all these Q folks are obsessed with child sex trafficking while ignoring Jeffrey Epstein...?

Happened with UFOs too--a half-century of little green man stuff making any even-handed investigation of unexplained phenomena basically impossible.

Meta-conspiracy: do shadowy powers invent conspiracies to distract from the more mundane (but still evil) things that are actually happening all around us?

"You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it." -- Robert Anton Wilson

alexshred420 · Post by **alexshred420** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 3:41 pm

Yuuuup, there's always a little bit of truth there. Funny to watch X-Files now and see the weird anti-vaxx stuff, that's for sure.

Anyway, what do my parents email me? My mom doesn't, but my dad emails me local news a lot, most of which I've already read but I do appreciate it. Sometimes photos that he digs up of old family stuff. Pics of Mt St Helens exploding. PNW ephemera.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 4:23 pm

Go ahead and dither us up a JPEG of exploding Mt St Helens, please

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:19 pm

yourfriendclaire wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 2:04 pmMeta-conspiracy: do shadowy powers invent conspiracies to distract from the more mundane (but still evil) things that are actually happening all around us?

That's what I think! It's textbook misinformation. I remember when I was studying Russian in college in 2000~+, I would read the big newspaper Pravda online. And there were always cover stories about obviously fake, worn-out UFO fables. It was so weird to see how the open lies sat side-by-side with important national news, in the newspaper of a major world power that millions of people relied on.

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:25 pm

Misery loves company...

So I also have a cousin who adheres to mass delusions.
He believes Illuminati control geopolitics, and that they were foretold in the bible. He's believed this for like 10 years, he first got it from a nutty Christian friend.

I feel fucked up about it! I feel a responsibility to make an effort to persuade him. In the long run his mind has been completely set in this general trend towards misinformation.

alexshred420 · Post by **alexshred420** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 8:53 am

Does this work? My dad took this in 1978 from Longview, WA _before_ the eruption.

: unnamed.jpg (314.88 KiB) Viewed 14754 times

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 1:44 pm

[mention]alexshred420[/mention] OH YEAH!

[mention]RCH[/mention] It's so rough. I don't know the right way to approach it...I think unfortunately once someone gets to that point it's real tough to undo. We've been watching the HBO doc series about the Nxivm cult and something that struck me in the most recent ep is the struggle ex-cult members have when they move from one community to another. When you're deep in something like that, you're surrounded by people who share your worldview and stuff that seems inconceivable to outsiders is justified because it's normal in your community. When you leave, you lose that feedback system of people telling you what's normal. They all seem to fare better when they have a community of fellow ex-cult people as kind of a bridge between two worlds. I think with the internet you can find a community that reinforces your beliefs about anything so it's hard to establish a baseline for what's normal.

infopetal · Post by **infopetal** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 7:49 pm

[mention]yourfriendclaire[/mention] that point about replacing one fringe community with another (potentially more acceptable?) one reminds me of how BreadTube is presented in Rabbit Hole, have you listened?

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 8:05 pm

[mention]infopetal[/mention] No, I’ll check it out!

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Wed Sep 30, 2020 2:35 pm

Brainwashing freaking sucks, not only is someone taking away your power to control yourself in the short term, but they are attacking your sense of trust and introducing isolation and fear for the rest of your life. I go to group therapy for survivors of sexual assault and it's about half people from religious, cult backgrounds.

God knows that I constantly struggle with having a baseline of what is normal

[mention]alexshred420[/mention] beautiful photo

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Wed Apr 07, 2021 8:15 am

My dad "wants to talk about Hemingway." Ohboy.

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:46 pm

hoo boy!
i'm guessing they are watching that Hemingway doc? sign me up to avoid it, please

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Wed Apr 07, 2021 8:21 pm

Fun Fact: in Russia they say "Gyemingvei"