Facing Forward

One computer annoyance is forwarded junk mail. Most of it comes from well-meaning contacts. These items can be such a nuisance that you feel like casting off the friends who do it. A couple of examples, are those who are into religion in a big way and who send you a prayer list for someone or something. If you break it, the subject of the prayer will not receive the healing or saving or whatever it is, and you are the perpetrator of its demise. It makes this type of onus hard to ignore. I do it very quickly before a certain celestial being might get me with a lightning bolt from on high. This sort of message should be sent to a loftier plane. To add my name to that kind of list, I assure you, is not going to be of great impact anyway.  Another annoying forwarder is the lazy individual who wants to "keep in touch" but doesn't want to go to the effort of actually penning something personal. This kind, had merely to push a key to send you an article, a website,  a cartoon, a picture or a joke and you are supposed to consider it a piece of correspondence from them. Excuse me, but that is not keeping in touch. Send me a note, a word or two that comes directly from you, please. Likely the worst kind of forwarder is the person who is sent quasi intellectual  bits of this and that academic detritus and sends it on  as though he read and pondered the piece himself. Or perhaps she has read something intriguing in a book by the one who had the brains to create it, but who copies, pastes and sends me the title. Advising another to read a book that you have not, is unfair. And it is worse if that perp says he or she intends to discuss it with me in future. This puts the pressure on me to read the dratted thing or be the dummy in the future debate.  Is one supposed to be impressed with regurgitated knowledge? I, for one, am not. Send me an original thought, a feeling, a few lines about an article or a book but please do not manipulate me to join a discussion on it later. I don't need that kind of pressure. I guess what is so annoying is that while the book, joke or picture appeals to the sender, it isn't something everyone may enjoy. But how do you stop this kind of junk mail forwarding in your life and not lose the friend in the mix.  Usually, I delete the bit immediately and pretend that I have done so accidentally but do not want to ask for it to be re-sent. Or I DIY. Delete, ignore and yawn. If asked if I received the item and what did I think about it, I have a long list of neutral remarks, hums and haws that usually suffice. They are much akin to the lost homework ones I used in high school. Exception: can't use the dog-ate-it formula though. First of all, I don't have a dog and second of all, even if I did, he wouldn't care to chomp computer. I think that if a person wants to communicate with me, he or she can jolly well, send a personal note. It doesn't have to be long, although contrary to computer etiquette, the-briefer-the-better, I happen to like longer e mails and welcome them as an appreciation of the person who takes time to express ideas at appropriate length and in standard English. Not all of us cybernuts are enamoured of three word blurps and the use of letters as words in amputated language. But that's another topic for another day.