January 29, 2024 by Amy
Unsubscribe
I’ve been on an unsubscribe tear lately, removing all the detritus that piles up in my inbox daily and feels harmless (delete here, delete there, delete everyfuckingwhere) but, before you know it, adds up to a significant amount of time and hassle. Who wants to wade through 35 emails from companies trying to sell you the same thing they tried to sell you this morning and yesterday and every day for the eight weeks prior to find the one important email you need to see? I’ve missed timely communications because they’ve been buried in trash. Seriously, DSW, sending me six emails a day does NOT make me want to buy more shoes from you. It just makes me want to burn down whatever building your idiotic marcomm staff work in. And Lululemon, you have my entire sales history. How many leggings does one bipedal need?
At the bottom of one email, from a small local vendor, I found the unsubscribe button and hit it, only to be taken to a 404: Page Not Found error. Pretty sure it’s illegal to not give folks a chance to unsubscribe. I waited for the next email, which of course came within the week, thinking that perhaps the link was just busted in the first. Nope. Same error. I ended up hitting reply and asking politely to be removed, and the owner promptly emailed me back and assured me I was unsubscribed, but it felt uncomfortable. No one walks into a store, looks around, and announces, “Welp, I’m never coming back here again!” before waltzing out. Let me just skulk out quietly. I’ve perfected the art of the Irish goodbye, thank you, and I prefer to drop off your contact list without you even realizing it.
One unsubscribe page made me open up seven different drop-down menus and manually unclick the newsletters to which I was subscribed. Keep in mind this was for a company from which I never signed up for anything. Some of the boxes were checked, some weren’t, so I had to open each menu and ensure each individual box was unchecked. There was no “unsubscribe from all.” So I can go, but you’re gonna be a douchebag about it. Thanks.
My favorites are the companies that, once you click out to the unsubscribe page and type in your email and check or uncheck all the boxes and smash that sweet sweet unsubscribe button, feel the need to send you one last email letting you know you unsubscribed. This is just a dick move. It’s one last “fuck you” from the company before you go. Thanks, assholes. (See above w/regards to setting the marcomm offices on fire.)
My inbox has also settled down quite a bit since the intensity of college application season has passed. Zoe, in her exuberance to start applying via the Common App, checked the box to receive “special offers and promotions.” She thought this would be information about summer programs and scholarships and such. She was wrong. Common App, I’ve come to discover, is a pimp who delights in whoring out the names and email addresses of applicants and their parents. Z learned her lesson, having spent approximately 72 hours each week since deleting emails from colleges nowhere near her radar screen and lamenting each time that she had made a grave error in ticking that box. Never, ever, agree to the special offers and promotions.
I’ve also discovered the delight in getting out of text solicitations by typing STOP as a reply. This has the satisfaction of a blunt command. It implies, “For the love of all that is holy, Solo Stove, I don’t want to buy a new Solo Stove every other day when we haven’t even fired up the first Solo Stove we bought yet, so STOP.” I got a spammy political message the other day from a regular old cell number and replied STOP. Two hours later I got the same message from a different cell number and STOPPED again. It’s been quiet on that front, but I worry that the campaign will just keep giving my number to volunteers, which is how these texts are coming in. I pray to the god of mass comms that there’s a process in place where volunteers forward the numbers of all who replied STOP to the campaign for removal off their contact lists, but I doubt any pol is as conscientious as that.
Despite all this, I love the relative ease with which you can control your communications. I wish it could be applied in other settings. Were you forced to gently ghost over several months that book club where one of the members turned out to be a raging bigot? UNSUBSCRIBE. Phone blowing up at 12:30 a.m. when an insomniac starts a trivial text thread with 42 people? Sweet Jesus: STOP. Husband texting you eleven hundred times in one hour from Costco with questions about what to buy? I’ll love you to the end of time, honey, but UNSUBSCRIBE. I like this so much, I may just start using it verbally. “Mom, where is my _____?” “UNSUBSCRIBE.” And then I just walk away, knowing I’ll never get asked that question again.
Hey, a girl can dream.
(You know what’s ironic? I have a “Subscribe” button right down there in the lower right corner of this site. Check it out. You can come and go as you please, and I promise to not spam the shit out of you trying to sell you something. Until I publish a book. Then all bets are off. But seriously, subscribing is a great way to be sure you get all my musings, especially since I’m usually perilously close to shutting down all my social media accounts anyway and then I’ll just be posting into the void, like back in the good old Blogger days.)
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