Email Lists - Pet Peeve

Welcome to the latest edition of Uman's Pet Peeves.

I'm on several subscription-based email lists (like Yahoo Groups), and lately there have been lots of people who are trying to unsubscribe, and are too stupid to figure out how.

I simply don't understand how people can be smart enough to subscribe to an email list, but not smart enough to unsubscribe. How can you be smart enough to ride the up-escalator, but be too stupid to ride the down-escalator? How can you be smart enough to open a door, but not be smart enough to shut it?

Most of the email lists I'm on give explicit instructions on how to unsubscribe at the bottom of every single email. One of my lists includes a monthly reminder message whose primary purpose is to explain to people how to get off the list. And still people can't get off the list!

But that's not what peeves me. What peeves me is that it's always someone else's fault. They claim that they never signed up for the list (often explaining that they've been on it for years and describing exactly how they got on it in the first place). Or they claim that nobody ever told them how to get off the list (which is really funny when their complaint is immediately followed by the standard system-generated message explaining exactly how to unsubscribe). Or they complain that the list members send too much email (um, then why did you sign up for something explicitly designed to send you more email?). Or they complain that they really aren't computer literate, like that's our fault -- not to mention that it falls into that trap I mentioned before...how can you be computer literate enough to subscribe to a list, but not literate enough to follow nearly the same directions to unsub?

Whatever the excuse, it's never their own fault. It's always somebody else's. And that peeve's me.

This has been Uman's Pet Peeves. Good night.