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PhotographyAlso called: The Psychoanalysis Interest Group Incident
I lost faith in academia today. For a while. But then there was some hope.
Ok, that’s not what happened. Let’s put it the way it was: there was so much stupidity mental hilariousness coming from people who should know better that I feel the urge to write this down here in a hopefully funny way to get me through the day fairly unscathed.
As happens from time to time, I was invited to some kind of University of Michigan group or event via email. Together with many other people, that is. These emails usually go to lists, like anthropology-grad-students, psychology-undergrads, law-faculty, et cetera. I don’t mind getting these emails, a couple per day – it keeps me up to date. And more often than not, especially the interdisciplinary events are pretty amazing. I have my gmail filter set in a way that all these announcements don’t appear in my important inbox, and I read them when I feel like it.
However, today was different. A person wrote an email about a psychoanalysis interest group […], to many different mailing lists. There was a reply, and a short discussion started, about this interest group, and how important it is for everybody to really get to know more about psychoanalysis. I guess there were 5 replies or so. Obviously, people always replied to everybody. I don’t know what they thought, seeing email addresses like the ones mentioned above in the address field. Probably there wasn’t a lot of thinking going on.
In any case, at some point a bold student replied:
“Please stop “Replying to All”!!! Thanks!”
And I thought: YES. I want your babies, Shana. And I thought: that’s it then. Problem solved. That was about 17 hours ago. Emails still keep coming in, the last on about half an hour ago. But let’s not be too hasty. What happened next?
In the next half an hour or so, I (and many other hundred people) received at least 20 emails, of the following nature:
“Please remove me from this group.”
“I would also like to be removed from this.”
“Hi, could you please remove me from this mailing list?”
“Please remove me from these communications.”
Ok. Hold on for a second. Imagine you are in the unlikely position of being part of a mailinglist that was addressed in an email, let’s say psych graduate students. And you get an email you do not like. In fact, 5 of them. And you can tell from the address field (which is right there in your face! Don’t tell me you didn’t see it) that there are many other hundreds of people as well who were addressed.
From all the possible responses, replying to everybody stating “remove me from this list/group/communication” is probably the least reasonable one. Shooting your dog might be more reasonable, really.
Some people even elaborated a bit, like this one:
“Please remove me from this list. I’m really tired of receiving emails from this group.
The original author owes all of us who want to be removed an apology.”
Oh really. The original author wrote one email to a couple of hundred mostly uninterested people. What did you do? Oh wait! You wrote one email to a couple of hundred mostly uninterested and by now probably slightly annoyed people.
I waited another half our or so. There was a reply stating the obvious, but it was ignored:
“All,
It appears that ––– sent the first of these emails, could you possibly ask to be removed by emailing her directly instead of emailing everyone (I acknowledge the irony of sending this as a “reply all”).”
But people didn’t find that very reasonable. And since the messages kept coming, I wrote a reply myself, trying to explain things a bit.
“Two people offered useful responses that were ignored, so I’ll try a third one.
Stop replying. It will have no effect whatsoever except for causing spam.
(1) Most lists of recipients in this email are lists like “anthropology.students@umich.edu”, which go to quite a large number of people. Therefor, these emails go to many hundred recipients (look at all the student-lists).
(2) You don’t want to receive emails that are not of interest to you. I agree, me neither. But do you think someone of the people who just uses “reply to all” can …
a) tell by your gmail address to which of the lists you belong, or
b) will somehow add 216 students manually to an email in a reply because one out of 217 students in a student-list wrote an email saying that he is not interested in this specific event? Probably not. So probably this isn’t going to do anything, except for causing more spam which you wish to avoid.
(3) After receiving 5 messages that I consider not of interest, receiving another 30 (and possibly hundreds) telling me that you want to be removed from the list is probably not going to be a solution to this ;)The solution is: it will not be necessary for 500 people now to reply “please remove me”. The message got through.
Thank you
Eiko”
I received a couple of nice emails stating of how people would sing songs about my heroic try to stop the ridiculous spam after my (untimely?) death. But nothing changed. Emails kept coming. Please remove me from this list!
However, there were some other emails of note.
1. First, the reasonable ones.
“Replying all and saying “Remove me” just sends everyone on the list another email. Instead, please follow the instructions and write to ––– directly … to be removed.”
–
“Folks, I assume the way to remove yourself from this list would be to send that request directly to ––– who sent the original message. Another possible way might be to report the list messages as spam. The new umich email system has a way of removing individuals from a list that they report as spam. To send removal messages to the entire list just escalates the problem and, in essence, mega-spams everyone.”
—
“There is NO LIST. There is no external world. There is only you & your reply button. RESIST THE URGE.”
2. Then there were other … let’s say interesting suggestions, like this one:
“Please remove me from this list immediately. I suggest that you remove everyone from this list who has not responded!”
3. Then people unsuccessfully tried to figure out technical details about forwarding, e.g.:
“I would like to stop getting these e-mails. I’m not on the any of the relevant lists in the cc tab, so I assume I or my list is BCC’d. Remove me or my list.”
If you “reply to all” in an email that had a person X addressed in the blind carbon copy, this person X will not get an email from you if you reply to all. BCC means you cannot possibly find out who this person is. The information is not transmitted in the email. Therefor, you cannot send this person an email.
4. Some of the mails didn’t make sense to me:
“I am in no way directly affiliated with any of your groups, but feel on the fringe of a great comedic radio or theater piece about anxiety around inclusion/ exclusion/control/lack of control/pharmacology and “the couch,” along the lines of Joe Frank In the Dark. Sorry for any inconvenience caused by this email, but found the entire thread today genuinely entertaining.”
—
“Please bring me my lunch. I request a low sodium option. have fun, –––”
5. And then came Steve, my hero. In fact, he deserves some bold letters. Steve. There you go.
“It is very important to me that I remain on this list, so please do NOT remove me from it.
I also want everyone who wants to be removed to continue to “reply to all.” You need to express your opposition to spamming, and the delicious irony of your doing so via spam is keeping me warm on an unseasonably chilly August day.”
And Steve turns out not to be only my hero.
“Please remove me from this list, I graduated and am out of the country. In other news, Steve, whoever you are, I want to be your friend, you sound hilarious.”
This is a bummer for Steve, seeing that she clearly didn’t quite get his sarcasm (and proving this by sending an email stating “remove me from this list” [unless it's double-triple-mega sarcasm]), but still finds his email funny and wants to be his friend.
It has been nearly 7 hours, and people still keep replying “please remove me from this list”.
However, interesting emails keep arriving, like this summary:
“Hello people who someone thought might have an interest in psychoanalysis,
In case you’re playing along at home, I’ve compiled some stats:
This is the 64th email in reply to the original.
There have been 3 distinct email threads (individuated by subjects).
3 replies (all from people in the philosophy department) express deep commitments to psychoanalysis and have authors who want to remain on the list.
12 of 64 replies-to-all were asking people not to reply to all.
1 youtube video was linked to (in a signature), and 1 picture was embedded (also in a signature).
All 4 philosophers who replied to this thread sent their replies in jest.
I’ll keep these stats updated with hourly replies-to-all.Your humble servant,
–––
P.S. If anyone with interests in psychoanalysis could explain to me what my sending of this email exposes about my subconsciousness, I’d be interested to hear.
P.P.S. If you’re still reading this email, you should go have a beer instead: –––”
Oh. Lastly, my favorite email:
“Which button should I press in gmail in order not to reply to all?”
I am sure noone has problems with the fact that these emails are published here – after all, it isn’t really “private email communication” anymore if you “reply to all” in an email with more than 20 mailing lists in the address field. And once again, don’t tell me you “didn’t see that”. What is there to see in an email except for the content and the people you address the email to?
I removed all names and email addresses from the conversations though, and might or might not have renamed
- Shana, who’s babies I want, and
- Steve, the hero.
The EDIT block:
EDIT: 5.10pm – a friend of mine despairs and considers to “punch someone in the tit if people keep sending emails”.
EDIT: 6.30pm – about 8 hours after all of this started. “Remove me from list” emails still incoming, most of them being serious, not trolling (e.g. one form of stupidity, not the other).
EDIT: 1.45am – next day. People start blaming the person who wrote the original email, other people defend her (obviously, using “reply to all”). Someone made a gmail account “Carl.Jung” and wrote a snarky comment as well.
EDIT: 2.00am – next day. A friend of mine concludes: “I guess people really don’t like psychoanalysis.” I start seeing the bright side of all of this.
EDIT: 1.35pm – next day. More emails keep coming, although the frequency dropped quite a bit. A professor emeritus suggested publication titles for reporting about this “experiment, like
“I Want Off! The Multiple Meanings of Incoherence”
“Remove me! Understanding the Primordial Wish”
“Spam! An Interdisciplinary Discourse (Psycho-) Analysis”
“Why Postmodern Life, Such as It Is, is Endlessly Interesting, even in August! A Psycho-Philosophical Enquiry”
EDIT: 6.55pm, next day.
“We simply need to stop hitting “Reply All” for the spam to stop. In other words, no one single individual is actually sending out the numerous emails regarding the Psychoanalysis Interest Group — except for us. In this way, we are perpetuating the very spamming problem we are trying to solve.”
Oh really!! Thanks for pointing this out. Seriously though … I like the idea of writing a couple of hundred people – as person number 15 or so – that all we need to do is stopping to write a couple of hundred people in order to not write a couple of hundred people. It is perfectly sensible.
August 22nd, 2012 at 18:31
I smell a dissertation topic here — and there is plenty of data to analyze!
August 23rd, 2012 at 04:33
I am one of those you quote about who wrote a “reasonable” response–about trying to stop the mega-spam. I also was one of those guilty of sending a “reply all” to the original query. There were, by the way, three, not five such responses. I was the third.
While it seems incredible to you, I really did not think I was responding to so many people. I assumed this was already an interested subset of those who had received the original query. My bad. But the reality is that gmail does not show all the folks included in “reply all”-just the first few. That said, I didn’t really look; just assumed. I won’t assume again.
Given how much craziness followed, I accept my own “sin” of carelessness and see myself as one of many imperfect ones. You may be such a one yourself. Give it a thought.
August 23rd, 2012 at 06:30
Gah, having taken care of umich email lists in the past, someone is doing a terrible job. The first and easiest step is (when someone actually notices), to switch the list to moderated only. The moderator still gets spammed, but when people realize their message isn’t reaching the masses, it usually stops.
August 23rd, 2012 at 09:39
Ich hab wirklich herzlich gelacht. Ging nicht anders.
:)))
August 23rd, 2012 at 15:23
Lesson 1: I guess maybe people should use BCC to write such emails in the future, then such a thing could never happen. Oftentimes people argue BCC doesn’t work because it is important for everybody to note who was included in the email. In this case, just mention the lists in the email.
Lesson 2: Next time this happens I’ll try a trick someone mentioned, which I didn’t come up with myself (just as imperfect as everybody else, Henry!) – reply to all, copy every email address except for the original one (or one of a friend you want to annoy) into the BCC field and send an email saying “this stops now”. The next people “replying to all” from there will only send an email to the one address provided in the address field.
Henry: If you send an email to a number of email addresses, of course they will all show up in the address field. It might be that you don’t see them all, because the lines are full. But when the lines are full one should savely assume there are more email addresses in there, just in case, and check. In the end this all comes down to the fact that people either (1) don’t think, (2) don’t care, or (3) have surprisingly little knowledge about emailing. And yes, I really liked your comment, Henry. The nice thing about all of this is that there were a lot of reasonable, hilarious and weird emails in there ;).
Michael, it wasn’t really a list – just a collection of 20 or so email addresses going to faculty@history, students@psych etc. You could probably manage these lists individually, but I’m sure someone inviting people to some form of event doesn’t necessarily the admin rights to do such a thing?
Elisa: Ja, ich würde gerne wissen wie viel private Kommunikation zwischendurch hin und hergegangen ist, wo Emails an ein paar Leute abgezweigt wurden etc. Mir haben z.B. ein paar Leute lustige Dinge geschrieben, woraus ein paar nette Gespräche entstanden sind, ich bin mir sicher das ist bei 200+ EMails häufiger passiert ;)
August 23rd, 2012 at 16:13
E-Ja, I have already confessed to my missing the boat on the addresses. Based on the two messages that immediately preceded mine (both people I know well), I assumed that this was a much smaller group of already interested people (for whom our comments would have been relevant). It was your beloved Shana’s message that made me realize my mistake. But, by then, the train had left the station, with Shana and her babies on board.
Beyond my personal mistake, what I found most striking was the number of “worthies” (as I’ve put it elsewhere) who continued to demand release from “the list”–lots of named chairs, distinguished professors, emerita, even a “MacArthur genius” and teaching award winners. Indeed, I would say this was more a food fight among “distinguished faculty” than among students, who generally kept cooler and wiser heads.
That’s a little scary from where I sit. I’m wondering if it reflects the “quick on the trigger” style that seems to characterize a lot these days–a wider meaning of minimal “gun control.” In any event, psychologist that I am, I see what happened as partly about carelessness and a lot about free-floating aggression, laced with pretension.
August 23rd, 2012 at 16:20
Interesting observation – I can’t validate it, seeing that few people had signatures, and I know very little staff at UM. I think if one were to study this, one would have to look what the demographics of the recipients were. If 95% were students, and 50% of the “remove me” messages came from professors, that would indeed be curious (although I don’t think that is the case really).
Then again it’s also confounded with time people have – I bet a lot more students read through all the messages, and I really don’t blame anyone who saw “remove me from this list”, and then “you have 100 new emails”, and instead of reading them all (and seeing messages explaining why you should not reply) just replied with a “remove” message as well.
And you really shouldn’t feel bad about sending that one message out. So did another 200 people – including me.
August 23rd, 2012 at 16:32
Right. I noticed the folks I knew (mostly faculty)–a surprising number and people whom I would not have expected–but didn’t calculate percentages. It was, in any case, not insignificant.
I feel good about my “stop the madness” message (and got a lot of thank yous as you did). As for the initial one, it’s easier to make such mistakes than I’d have guessed. I don’t blame the new email system (googles don’t spam; people spam), but I think it may be somewhat easier to miscue while one is getting used to it. On the other hand, the “conversation” feature makes it also easier to get rid of whatever in a single flush. So people using it don’t so much get spam as a spam sandwich (on pumpernickel).
Agree that there was a lemming quality also. Maybe lemmings without guns. Or borders.
August 23rd, 2012 at 19:27
For what it’s worth, this is not an isolated case. Yes, that there were just a number of email lists makes it a lot harder to moderate. I thankfully never had to deal with that but on a list of undergrads, we tried to lock things down with the assumption that people will abuse the lists.
This might make you feel better about having only recieved on the order of a hundred emails…
http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2004/04/08/109626.aspx
September 2nd, 2012 at 16:13
I quite like the proposals by Prof. Emeritus. And the fact that all the philosophers responded in jest…
One question plagues me: I thought gmail had a “mute conversation” setting? Doesn’t this exactly what you want in that case?
September 2nd, 2012 at 16:27
Yes, there is the “mute conversation” setting.
But sometimes, you just can’t look away.
September 19th, 2012 at 00:10
sudo remove me from the list?
(writing to everyone of course)
September 19th, 2012 at 00:17
sudo make me a sandwich ;)