Still Life with Robin: Eight and a half per day

by Peggy Robin

Before I get into the substance of this column, let me start with a disclaimer: This is NOT about national politics (considered "off-topic" on our very-locally-focused Cleveland Park Listserv). The subject is Email Overload. That's one of those little irritations of daily life that is grist for the Listserv's ever-churning comment-mill -- and it's my complaint of the week. The substance of those emails just happens to be about a national political campaign. (I bet you can guess which one keeps emailing me!)

Email overload could easily be my complaint any day of any week, any week of the year; my inbox is a magnet for spammers of all types, not just political spam. The trouble is, I can't set my spam filter to be too aggressive or it will weed out the many legitimate inquiries from list members that happen to use a few common spam keywords in their messages. Or worse, it will trap and discard inquiries from neighborhood businesspeople who would like to advertise on the Listserv. So every day, I need to manually delete a bunch of spam emails. It's the price I pay for running a Listserv that reaches over 12,200 subscribers from all walks of life.

Now we come to what makes the problem worth noting in this space. In any election season, the number of unwanted emails skyrockets. It's not spam, exactly, as I am a registered voter and follow politics closely, and even donate a bit, when the spirit moves me, So political campaigns may acquire my email in a few different legitimate ways -- and then, of course, they go on to sell my name and email address as widely as they can. I can't really blame anyone for that; it's the way things work everywhere in politics.  

But this year, the number of campaign donation requests has not just boomed, it's exploded. Not just a dozen emails a week, but on one day last week there were a dozen in a DAY! (August 12, if you're interested.) 

So starting last week, as an experiment, I decided not to delete any of them and see how many I got. The answer? Sixty. That's an average of 8.57 emails per day. Do they imagine anyone is opening and reading all these things?

It's no use unsubscribing or writing to the campaign to ask them to slow the flow to a reasonable level (like, say, twice a week, which is the number I think I would find manageable, even interesting.) I've learned from past election years that it does absolutely no good to hit the "unsubscribe" link. It's far too time-consuming, in any case, to open each email and root around for that hard-to-find link, usually in teeny, tiny type, after you've scrolled and scrolled down to the tail end of the message. And clicking on the link is rarely enough; next you need to tell them what email address you want to unsubscribe. I have a bunch of email addresses, and who knows which one has made their list? Way too much work for me to find out -- especially for something that seems to accomplish nothing at all. It's the same for texting "STOP" to phone text messages. I've learned the hard way not to bother -- just mark as junk and delete.

Of course, this volume of campaign begging for my bucks is not just annoying; it's got to be off-putting to some percentage of voters. I can't imagine that anyone is made MORE enthusiastic for a candidate by this high pressure hose of political spam flowing in, day in and day out. I suspect the reason behind it is that someone believes, the heavier the flow of emails, the harder it shows the campaign is working. But I wonder if there's ever been a truly impartial study that charts the real-life effect on recipients (that is, not a study produced by political consultants designed to prove that the more email campaigning you do, the more progress you'll make. Why would anyone design a study that shows what they're doing is ineffective -- or even counter-productive.?

So, this little experiment over, I have dumped all 60 campaign emails in the trash. Take it from me -- a study of one -- I did not respond to a single one of them. 

Is there a subject line that could get me to open an email and reply with some money? Yes, I've thought about it long and hard and I think this would do it: "Donate today and we promise you will receive no more campaign emails for a month!" Of course, they'd need a way to make good on that promise. But if there are any campaign honchos out there, please take my idea and run with it. That's my real contribution!

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Still Life with Robin is published on the Cleveland Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.