Email and the Pre 1970 generation...

What is it about “older” people and forwarding random stories, chain letters, gossip, pointless videos, and sob stories through email?

Am I the only one who has experienced this phenomenon?

There are quite a few older members of my family that "keep in touch" with me via email. I put that phrase in quotes because their definition of keeping in touch is very different from mine. I define it to be sending a message that includes some form of the following:

- A short greeting
- Questions about the well being/life of the person I'm contacting
- A summary of the current events in my own life
- A short farewell

Notice how none of those things are random. No stories about kitchen fires, no Microsoft money making schemes, no video attachments that just may save your life (unless of course these things are part of my life). Nope, nothing like that. Just plain old, "Hi, I'm doing ok, I hope you are too."

See, I get at least three or four of these random forwarded emails from "older" family and friends a week. The craziest part of all this to me is that, if these people picked up a phone (landline or otherwise) and called me, I highly doubt they would spend the entire conversation telling me about some dumb advertisement or infomercial they saw recently. And yet that is almost exactly what they are doing when they send me these emails.

I realize that some of you would say the destructive power of the "send to all" button is perhaps mostly to blame for this problem. I feel that is quite the cop out though. It's the same thing to say that guns are responsible for all the shootings that take place.

Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to use it!

Does this happen to you too?