I'd like to get real emails from you...

[Lady Snowdon]

One of my cousins has taken to forwarding me weird, useless, incredibly long emails, usually including pictures and stories.  I hate these chain emails with a passion.  Especially since she doesn't BCC, and by now her entire list of friends has gotten everyone's address at least 10 times in the past week alone.  I've gotten FOUR already today! 

What I'd rather get from her is a short email, every once in a while, telling me how she's doing, and how her DD is doing.  I don't want 20 forward; I want one genuine email.  Is there a polite way to ask her this?  Or can I only ask her to stop sending me forwards? 

[magician5]

'I love to hear how you're doing, and I love when you keep in touch with news about your life, but please ... no more forwarded copies of things you found on the web, OK?"

Doesn't strike me as rude.

[Amava]

What I do when someone does this to me:

I pick one of their forwards about which I have something sensible to say, and then reply to it as if it was a personal email and ask them some things about themselves and tell them some things about mine. Sometimes it works to get the "normal mail exchange" to work again.

For example:
"Hey Friend, I really wouldn't worry about Bonsai Kittens, though I agree it would be horrible if it was real, but it is not! It's a joke that has been on the internet for more than a decade now. I get plenty of those hoaxes in my inbox every day - would you please mind not forwarding them to me anymore? Speaking of pets, I have a new dog! My dear old dog died a while ago and I still miss her a lot,  blah blah blah, went to the shelter and adopted this new dog, yadda yadda yadda, and how are you doing? Do you still have cats and a dog of your own? Is everything going well in your life? I'd love to hear from you soon!"

or:
"Hey Cousin, well wouldn't that be awesome if it was real! Sadly, Bill Gates is not handing out his money to people who repost this email - I'm sorry to tell you, because yes, couldn't we all do with a bit of money? I could definitely use it to invest in my new business! I make figurines crafted out of merinowool now! I learned that for my classroom first, but now I don't teach anymore - I take it, from your facebook updates, that you are still teaching and enjoying it? What age level do you teach now? Do you have nice colleagues? etc etc, get together for a chat, blah blah blah. P.S. Would you mind not sending me forwards anymore, please? I get so many of them in my inbox they drown out my real mails! Thanks so much in advance! "

[SoCalVal]

One of my cousins has taken to forwarding me weird, useless, incredibly long emails, usually including pictures and stories.  I hate these chain emails with a passion.  Especially since she doesn't BCC, and by now her entire list of friends has gotten everyone's address at least 10 times in the past week alone.  I've gotten FOUR already today! 

What I'd rather get from her is a short email, every once in a while, telling me how she's doing, and how her DD is doing.  I don't want 20 forward; I want one genuine email.  Is there a polite way to ask her this?  Or can I only ask her to stop sending me forwards? 

I'd kinda go with Amava's suggestion or just ignore the forward altogether and reply with a regular e-mail (or just send a regular e-mail to her on its own).

I once tried to reply to a friend with something like, "Hey, I'd love to hear how YOU specifically are doing, not just a forward," and he got really mad and sent me a nasty e-mail in reply (and he was like your cousin and sent A LOT of chain forwards).  Of course, this upset me, and I ignored it.  We didn't communicate with each other for a couple of months, I think.  One day, he sent me an e-mail and said, "Okay, I'm over my mad now."  I replied with, "Well, I'm not over mine" so he said, "Okay, I'll wait."  I was still mad for a few months after he got over his mad because I was really offended by his reaction and while I knew I'd get over it eventually and that it wasn't an end to our friendship, I still needed to not be mad.  Once I was no longer mad, I contacted him, and we were fine after that.  We agreed it was a miscommunication on his part (really, all I said was I'd like to know how he was doing, not just get e-mail forwards, and he totally took it the wrong way; he got over it when he was ranting about me to a mutual friend who then pointed out to him my good points so he got over it).

[Cupcake Fiend]

I tried telling a friend something similar a while back.  She stopped sending me forwards, but also stopped emailing me at all.  Including answers to personal messages I sent her. 

[Mahdoumi]

I tried telling a friend something similar a while back.  She stopped sending me forwards, but also stopped emailing me at all.  Including answers to personal messages I sent her. 

Wow!  Not too sensitive! 

Something similar happened to me recently with an older man in my office.  I finally tried to explain in a kind way that I didn't have time to read - not to talk about respond to -10 emails a day from him, which were mostly tidbits only interesting to him (like his business travel itinerary or links to the cruise line he and his wife were thinking of using or his annual review).  He did "get his back up" because he was watching to see how long it took me to open these messages or *gasp* simply deleted them without opening.  Yeah, creepy.  He completely stopped sending me ANY emails for a month including those that were project-related.  The company party was this past Saturday night, and we had a pleasant 10-minute chat.  So, I guess he thought that meant everything was cool, again, because I logged on this morning to find five emails (jokes, a link to his wife's pharmacy, etc.) in my inbox.

[Nurvingiel]

I like Amava and magician5's suggestions about wording an email to her. It's not rude to inquire about her, and ask her to stop forwarding things.

I tried telling a friend something similar a while back.  She stopped sending me forwards, but also stopped emailing me at all.  Including answers to personal messages I sent her. 

If that is someone's reaction to being politely asked not to send forwards, frankly, I don't see the loss.

Either she never wanted to communicate with you in any real way, or she was actually mad at your request and took her ball and went home forever. That is silly in the extreme.

Mahdoumi, I think you should politely remind your co-worker not to send you forwards again, but that of course you want to keep up to date with him about mutual projects. Then when he goes AWOL, about a week into a mutual project, ask his boss if he has any information for you, since you haven't heard from him at all about the project.

Gosh I'm full of opinions today. 

[blarg314]

For someone who occasionally sends forwards (ie less than a few a week), I generally just delete them unopened.

But for this sort of thing - ie multiple emails a *day* - I think a polite email saying that you would love to hear from her personally, but that you simply don't have time to read forwards.

If they get offended and stop emailing you at all, then you're still ahead of the game - you weren't getting personal emails before and now you're not getting spam either. If they ignore you and keep sending it, then I'd set up a filter that directs all their mail to a folder, and once a month check if there's any real communication before deleting it all.
 

[Nurvingiel]

OT, but are we talking 1-2 forwards per week? I think that's actually quite a lot.

[Lady Snowdon]

OT, but are we talking 1-2 forwards per week? I think that's actually quite a lot.

It's actually more like 6 or more forwards per week.  I got three forwards yesterday alone (sorry, I miscounted in my OP).  I modified Amava's suggestion and wrote a short email back to her, asking how she and her DD are doing and could you please limit the number of forwards that you send?  Hopefully she isn't offended. 

[Perfect Circle]

My best friend did this a lot few years ago and it was so irritating. She's the most wondeful person but unfortunately very indiscrimante on what she would forward. After few months of bombarding me with every possible chain email, cute teddies or really yucky sweet poems I just politely asked her not to fill my inbox because I didn't have time to read them. She was absolutely fine with that, but I think also the fact that we are such good friends helped.

As this person is your cousin, would you be able to just ask her to stop including you in all these chains but keep in touch about her life?

[SoCalVal]

This thread reminds me that I have a friend who not only does e-mail forwards, but she had also started sending them to my work e-mail.  I put a stop to that immediately (she was once in IT so I can't believe she not only doesn't know how annoying those forwards are but how inappropriate it was to forward to my work e-mail spam for a charity she supports!).  I don't get in trouble for personal e-mails but because she forwards so much spam, the last thing I wanted was for my work In box to get flooded with spam as a result of her forwards and my work e-mail address getting distributed via her actions.

Funny thing is that I once e-mailed her at HER work e-mail (in reply to her monthly work e-mail spam for customers), and she immediately requested I not e-mail her at that address (!).  I think her reply was in reply to my request to take me off her mailing list.