Strange but true, I love e-mail forwards. The joke mails, the virals, the quizzes, the serious newspaper opinion pieces, the facetious discussions on Kolaveri di or Slap Gate — bring them all on. I am, as Dhanush might sing the next time, Konjum loose-u, konjum crack-u.
Most people I know grumble and get grumpy about the number of forwards they get. They get wild about being clubbed with a hundred others in the cc list; about the flurry of missives in the chain left undeleted; and so on and so forth. My husband deletes forwards without even opening them. And hundreds of etiquette columns are written on the dangers of forwarding without thinking. (The Internet, or e-mailing, specifically, by the way, really seems to have revived the etiquette industry — there are etiquette columns on how to sign off, how to forward, who to cc and who not to and so on, but more on that later.)
My job is all about keeping in touch and I have discovered that forwards, if used well, are great business and relationship tools. In the old days one had to phone the source regularly and waste a lot of time in idle chit-chat just to show that you were alive and kicking and to remember you whenever a newsbreak happened.
Today, it is so much easier. You just choose a nice juicy forward that will pique his or her interest and send it off. Job done, no words, or time, or even money, wasted.
Even in the personal sphere, you meet somebody nice at a social do and after the initial flurry of e-mails saying how great it was to meet up, there is usually nothing left to say and you gradually lose touch. But you don't want to shut them out of your life totally and forwards are such a convenient way of staying in touch.
Forwards, if you are into pop psychology like me, also tell you a great deal about a person. For instance, I never would have thought that the very propah, butter-won't-melt in her mouth lady I met at a do, would be the sort to send bawdy forwards — it put a whole new spin to her personality. The result — the next time I met her, I was not as formal as I would have been in the normal course and today, we are good friends.
I also would never have thought the uncle who reduced us to helpless laughter with his puns, would be the sort to send mushy, chicken soupish forwards. Hmm, that was a shock.
You get to understand people's obsessions and spare time interests, which really helps when you meet them offline. For instance, I have a set of people who only send me doggy forwards. And when we proceeded to have dinners together, the conversation invariably revolved around our respective mutts. One lady forwards me stuff on coping with Alzheimer's and old age problems with unfailing regularity. A friend told me the other day that a classmate of hers who forwards very preachy religious stuff to their school e-group has now been sent to Coventry by the group.
Of course, there are several downsides too — the dangers, as the etiquette columns point out, of offending someone are seriously real. For instance, a colleague recently got into a tizzy over a joke I sent her on the reservation issue. It left me rather red-faced.
Very often what you send comes back to you. And, admittedly, 60 per cent of the forwards are horrible. But then, that's true of most things — books, the work assignment, movies, the food in the office lunch menu, you name it. So on the whole, I don't mind. The remaining 40 per cent is what keeps life from getting dreary.