so fed up with all this "93% won't" nonsense!

once again I get an email supporting a good cause but absolutely doing my head in with the emotional blackmail that's added in: 93% of people won't forward this... will you be one of those who... yada yada

if only they didn't include this rubbish, I might have actually read the whole thing, and who knows, I might even have chosen to forward the email. but I'm afraid I get so annoyed when I see these things that I just press Delete.

maybe this is why 93% won't forward it? because 93% are fed up to the back teeth with the amount of emotional blackmail they get from their friends on the email? (not to mention all those facebook status update things.)

how about a slightly more respectful approach? how about emailing and saying: you know, there's this cause which I feel is important, I wonder if you'd like to support it to by forwarding the email to others? I wonder what percentage of people would rise to that...

so, why don't I feel like forwarding an email with such a great story

This is one I've seen before, it's about a brave woman called Irena Sendler, who saved Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Poland and paid a high price when she was caught.

And I checked it on Snopes and it's true. A true story about a brave woman - what's not to like?

So why was I feeling uneasy? I read the Snopes entry and pondered a bit. The one thing that Snopes say they can't verify is whether or not it's true that she was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, because that information is not actually publicly available. So this claim is possibly true but we can't know for sure.

Snopes also quote a statement from the International Federation of Social Workers, who expressed disappointment that she didn't get this prize. With that I have no problem - anyone is entitled to express disappointment with a result that they're not happy with.

Here's what I'm not comfortable with in the email that's being circulated:

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She was not selected.

Al Gore won --- for a slide show on Global Warming.

The implication being: aren't those people terrible, to award the prize to that man for such a piddly thing instead of giving it to this wonderful brave woman.

Now, I'm not particularly an Al Gore fan, and I'm not quite convinced about the Global Warming theory, but I don't like the way his efforts are made fun of by calling his movie "a slide show", and more importantly, I don't like the way this value judgement is being tied in with the whole thing, so that people will feel like they really ought to forward this email because Irena Sendler was such an amazing woman, and thus they're being manipulated into signing up for this value judgement about Al Gore at the same time - if you want to honour this woman, can't you do it without rubbishing another human being who is, whether you agree with him or not, trying to do something for stuff he believes is important?

It's this mixing of different issues that I don't like, bringing the Al Gore issue in through the back door so you don't notice because your eyes are too moist from thinking of this brave woman's sacrifice - I don't think that's actually honouring to her memory.

(and being a nitpicker I can't fail to notice that it says this Nobel prize thing happened "last year" - which means this story has been circulating on the email since 2008.) (lesson no.37: don't believe everything you read on the email, but most importantly do not trust what they say about how long ago stuff happened.)

Pet Peeve #43.7

Emails with just a link to somewhere on the web. Do you get those? I don't mean spam, I mean an email from a friend, with something non-descriptive in the subject line and the body of the email containing just a URL.

Why do people think I'm likely to click on a link if they haven't bothered to tell me anything about it? Is it something they have found useful? interesting? annoying? amusing? something they are pleased about? something that made them angry? is it something they're sending to the whole world, or did they particularly think I might find it of interest?

Sorry. If you want me to click on a link, tell me why I should.

You wouldn't believe the things that people would go and do

I was going to write something and head it "et tu, BT?" following my attempt a few days ago to get British Telecom to divulge to me how much they charge for a call to an 0870 number - obviously highly classified information, which you can only receive after giving them your phone number, your name, your postcode, and possibly some other stuff I've forgotten. You may think I'm blowing it out of proportion, but, you know, things do get out of proportion when you've been waiting 15 minutes to talk to someone whilst being constantly told by a recorded message that they are very busy at the moment, which I translate as: we can't be bothered to hire enough staff to answer your calls more quickly. And that 15-minute wait comes, naturally, after the usual ritual of having to press 1 if you're an Aries and 5 if you prefer your pizza with olives.

Tsk. Everyone gets annoyed by these things, right?

And what about those people who dawdle on the road, doing 40mph when the speed limit is 60? Isn't that just infuriating?

And those cyclists who cycle on pavements?

Oh, hang on a minute, what did you say? You do that yourself? Oh, sorry, hmmm, well, now that you mention it, it's not really such an awful thing to do, now, is it... Hmmm... No, you're right, it's not anywhere near as bad as murder... And, yes, you're right, I probably do some things that annoy other people. Actually, I expect there's someone somewhere at this very moment having a moan about people who write blogs in which they moan about all their pet peeves.

The thing is, first of all, to get things into proportion. My pet peeves are only my pet peeves, nothing more. Doing things that annoy me is not, in itself, wrong. (That's because I am not the centre of the universe.)

And when you discover who the person is that was doing whatever it was that was annoying you, and if turns out that that person is someone you actually like, that kind of takes the sting out of the whole thing, doesn't it? I remember a particularly stressful day at work when I got very worked up because when I went to the photocopier and put a page in and pressed the button, what came out was a pink photocopy. Because somebody had used pink paper and forgotten to remove it. I came back to my desk muttering darkly, 'You wouldn't believe the things that some people would go and do!' until my best friend at work apologetically confessed, 'It was me.' That's when I burst out laughing.

And ever since then, when I find myself getting worked up about annoying things that people do, all I have to do is say to myself, 'You wouldn't believe the things that some people would go and do,' and the bubble bursts and I find myself laughing.

So, if you see someone sitting in a car, stuck in a traffic jam, laughing her head off, it may be me...