The Google thingie defines “retarded” thusly:
adjective
less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one’s age.
informal offensive
very foolish or stupid.
It is therefore the premise of this HSA (“highly scientific article”) to demonstrate that email – and nearly all practitioners thereof, including author – is indeed less advanced in development than is usual for one’s age.
Firstly: How old is email? Answer: I don’t care. Old enough to stop sucking and ruining our days. Let’s skip to the good part.
Secondly: The Good part. How does email demonstrate the general attributes of retardation? Let’s delve into specifics, corporate warriors of the keyboard.
- Stop Hitting Reply All To Say Something Retarded, like “Thanks!”
- Stop using exclamation points to sound friendly. See! It Works! (As if I’m in any danger of sounding friendly.)
- I know what – email client, let’s go “ping” “ping” “ping” “ping” “ping” every fifteen seconds with a new email of someone hitting Reply All to say “Thanks Bob!” or “Thx!” or “Got it thanks Bob!” or “Great!” (see “Thanks Corellary” below)
- Let’s keep our mail client open all the time in case we get an email we actually HAVE to deal with, so can listen to “ping” Thanks Bob! all day
- Let’s render everything in a really good order so we can keep track of important stuff. Hmm let’s see. I know! Most recent at the top! Yeah!
Great now I forgot what I started for. An email came in.
Thanks!
Andrew
ps. The “Thanks Corellary” explained in hypotentudinal form: In real life, saying “thank you” is a courtesy. Well, in most civilized societies it generally is, present day excluded. In fake “email life” however, it actually becomes a liability. “Oh Good God, one more thing to delete.” Therefore a straight graph line Q can be drawn along the X axis “Suck” correlated against the Y Axis “More Stupid Stuff To Delete” triangulated against the hidden Z axis representing “Seconds Remaining That I Am Alive” to yield the function F(Stop Now) to produce a differential of “Hit Head With Brick.”
