Back when college applications were our biggest problems, my generation was indoctrinated into the Cult of the Extracurricular Activity. “If you can’t play the saxophone with your mouth and the nose flute with your nose while leading a cheer and scoring record points for the sports team you captain, you’re really not worth my time. Our time.” That’s the best I can remember the speech from the Berkeley admissions officer I met. Their neighbors in Palo Alto tried to be more laid-back about the situation but, when pressed, admitted that earning an Eagle Scout badge wasn’t interesting until I had also captured, tamed, and raised a real eagle and its eaglets, learning a life lesson or three along the way.
Long story short, the eagle didn’t make it, and neither did I (hello, Ithaca), but that need to be involved in activities, activities, activities held up, leading to the point: my inbox is never empty. I get at least ten e-mails a day from the respective listservs of the different things I’m involved in here: clubs, music group, eagle care training, fraternity, etc.
E-mail strikes up a great deal of emotional interest. If you haven’t heard of e-mail addiction, it’s probably because you’re too busy hitting “send/receive” in your Outlook; if you’ve never spent a frustrating morning cleaning spam out of your inbox, you probably don’t have the necessary skills to read this blog. Everyone wants: messages that directly concern them; messages they find entertaining; nothing else. Everyone gets: messages they didn’t really need; messages that try and fail to be entertaining, and then try, try again; everyone once in a while a gem that was worth their time. The conflict between these, the E-mail Dream and the E-mail Reality, is what drives the populist Listserv Leviathan. (I use “Leviathan” in the sense Wallace uses when citing Hobbes.)
This Leviathan rears its ugly head when a particular abuser of listserv privileges sends one too many chain letters or inside jokes out to people who don’t need or want them. It can strike as a Citizen’s Arrest, when an angry listserv member lets the whole group know what is and is not appropriate for a forwarded message (“YOU ARE NOT FUNNY, [name removed at Jim’s request]”), or as a Ninja Strike, when a listserv administrator blocks the offending writer from ever e-mailing the group again. (I invented these terms; eat your heart out, Wallace.) The Citizen’s Arrest both enforces the standard (unless the convict gets sassy) and reminds everyone on the listserv what the rules are. Public shame is just as effective over e-mail as in person. The Ninja Strike is quieter, but its threat is potent. When I was younger and more foolish, I abused one of my listservs to the point that I, myself, received this threat; it worked. After that, I wrote to that listserv like my eagle ate salad (never). Wallace’s concept of the “raised eyebrow” can enter into the gray area of e-mails that disparage listserv abuse as a sidenote, but my experience has been that the annoyance usually just builds up to a breaking point before a raised eyebrow can quiet things down. Then, the conformity Wallace mentions follows immediately.
There are a couple more areas of listserv abuse and Leviathan responses I’d like to discuss, such as which Citizens are more likely to make Arrests (older, more settled-in and influential members of the group that owns the listserv address), or when the Leviathan fails (it’s the Cornell Fear-of-Confrontation Club ’serv, i.e., the members are too timid or polite to respond to the irritating authors), but I’m more interested in hearing if you guys have had similar experiences. After all, it’s possible that I’ve just gravitated toward the listservs that have loud members....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Ken,
I thought your post was pretty accurate. I, myself, have never been the victim of a Citizen's Arrest or a Ninja Strike, although I have come across others who have been reprimanded for hitting the "reply all" button rather than just replying to the original emailer, and the original emailer only.
One of the listserves I used to take part in was the Women's Club Ultimate listserve (I no longer play for the team, so I requested to stop recieving their emails). Everyday there would be multiple emails, the majority of them responding to an original email. For example, who can and can't make practice a certain day. There would be members who would reply to the entire group with just one word (yes/no/etc). These emails would frustrate me to no end! I didn't care for this useless messgaes which did not pertain to me, and I think the others didn't really care to find out who could and couldn't make practice besides the coaches. Once, one of my teammates wrote an email and sent it out to the listserve. It said, "PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HIT THE "REPLY" BUTTON. NOT THE REPLY ALL BUTTON." I thought this was funny because it sounds like this person got really annoyed/mad (from writing in all capital letters), but I was glad she sent out the message. After that, I received few one word emails (thankfully!).
I think that once members of a listserve get annoyed with a certain habit of the group or certain members, something will be said--either on their own behalf to the entire listserve, or to the Leviathan him/herself who might plan to take care of the issue with a Ninja Strike. Afterall, when communicating through CMC, there are fewer gating features and a greater sense of anonymity therefore a greater sense to disclose more...
I totally understand where you are coming from. Most of the listservs i am on are undercontrol and do not send out lame emails to everyone(like my sports team one- the emails range from funny to hilarious, making my day everytime i read one). Of course every listserv has its moments of complete over-the-topness where people send out a very "emotional chain letter" that they want to share with everyone, but I think the Leviathan is very powerful thing that cause people to be scared about crossing over the line. Also, wondering what fellow listservers think of the email you sent serves as a Leviathan all in itself. People do not want to be embarassed or be looked at in a negative or annoying light. I enjoyed reading your post!
Nice post, Ken. I'd have to say my experience with listservs are limited, as I have only really been active in the one for my a-cappella group, The Chordials. We have a listserv that reaches all the Chordials alumni and current members, and another that reaches only active members. Both are used to talk about upcoming concerts and gigs, and the second one contains minutes of our rehearsals, as well as discussions between members planning various events/times to meet for certain performances. In all honesty, however, the activechords listserv is used for us to send YouTube videos and amusing comments to each other 90% of the time. We maintain a good amount of professionalism when it comes to organizing ourselves for gigs via the listserv and within rehearsals themselves, but because the listserv is privy to a small and closely knit group of people (not to mention some of the most intense and immature people on campus), our Leviathan is quite lax. In fact, we enjoy that it's not there because we often use the listserv simply to babble to each other. It is the norm in this particular listserv to do so, however I can understand the contrast between this listserv and another much larger listserv where not everyone will understand your inside jokes. The example you gave in your blog entry reflects the latter exactly.
Picking up how college students use a particular listserv happens pretty quickly, but do you think that with the vast variety of listservs out there, rules and norms of a listserv will evolve? And to bring Wallace back into all this, who makes up all these rules anyway?
Very interesting post. I can affirm that it greatly annoys me when someone replies to the entire listserv rather than a specific person, though my experience with them is quite limited. I also can't stand those "100 Bush Jokes" lists or the slightly creepy "inspirational" stories a lot of people seem to find so amusing. I want pertinent information to the subject and that's all.
Your terminology is hilarious because I've never thought of administrative action in those terms before. I agree with your sentiment that "public shame is just as effective over email as in person," though I wonder why that is, since it really shouldn't be if one goes by a lot of the theories we've gone over in class so far.
At work, I was on a list-serve for the social committee. It included all of the events for interns at the company I worked for. One poor soul, couldn't seem to get with the program and the entire list-serve was attacked with his personal messages to the President of the committee. But what I think was even worse, was the flood of e-mails from the unhappy list-serve members stating "DON'T HIT REPLY ALL." Why couldn't they direct their "constructive criticism" at only the offendor? Maybe because they were trying to spare his feelings and make it seem like a more general comment, meanwhile people such as myself had to suffer from the flood of unrelated e-mails.
Ken,
Great posts on list-servs! I too am guilty of "subscribing" to more list-servs than humanly necessary in order to fuel my email addiction. Only 50% of the list-servs I am on are relevant to teams, clubs, activities and sections that I am currently active in. Of these, one of them is a sorority list-serv exclusive to the girls in my pledge class. We email each other daily discussing plans for events; past, present and future. Since there are 40 of us, these mass-emails bring out a strong sense of group identification. This unique email list-serv functions as a way to "polarize" our group because we all "feel some sense of group identity".
As for the other 50%, it seems as if the Leviathan has failed me. I admit that I very well could be the president of "Cornell's Fear-of-Confrontation Club". Sigh. If only CU webmail had a "remove from list-serv" option.
Post a Comment