The Price of Being CyberSocial

Sigh. I truly despise drama and being around those who swarm in it. I usually have my crazy shields up but was caught off guard today. I made a simple request of a friend who had sent out a mass email to her friends of some silly slide show of kittens. I asked her not to forward me stuff like this, and that she should be using the bcc field instead. If you just send things out using cc field or to: everyone you send the email to gets your friend's email addresses. Simple thing. Not too much to expect and I was quite gracious about asking her, and told her I welcomed any personal emails she wished to send about how things were going with her new business, and so on. Venom came back in a barrage of spitey emails. Silly childish things meant only to lash out. Wow, all that effort because I asked you not to send me junk. I replied to her a couple of times asking her to stop contacting me and finally had tell her to dial down the crazy or I was going to report her for harassment. More messages, but I have chosen to ignore them. I'm done. She hurled the final childish insult - I'm going to give your Christmas present to someone else this year! Honestly. Did you really say that at your age? Strange because she had never sent me a gift in all the years I've known her.

I have asked this of dozens of my friends over the years and as far as I know, no one took it this personal. I'm sorry, but I just don't want another email full of headers that others were too lazy to remove, to look at some sickeningly sweet photos of kittens and puppies that have all been sent around the internet for about 10 years or more now. I don't want a slideshow of puppies. I don't want to send an email out to 20 of my friends so I can receive good wishes from some slimy toad or the princess of ponyland. I'm not 12 years old. I have underwear older than that. Give me a break. We're all adults here and this friend is a university graduate from nearly a decade ago, and old enough to know better. Simple email etiquette is to protect your friend's privacy by using the BCC field. This is not new. Unless everyone you are sending the message to already knows ALL of the people you have included in your mass email message, you should never share someone else's email address this way. It is a huge breach of trust, and any professional agency I have ever worked for had it spelled out in their email etiquette portion of orientation.

Her defense was that I seem to be okay with posting every detail of my life on Facebook, so why should I be upset about her sharing my email address. Wrong answer. I do not share my email address or phone number on Facebook. If you really knew me, you would know that. Not to mention I am related to over half o the 300 people on my friend list. Big family. So sue me. But I still don't give them all my email address. I want to know why you need it first.

It is difficult maneuvering through the social network generation. While I enjoy keeping in touch with the friends and family I connect with along my travels, it does come at a price - a loss of privacy and control over your information through social networking. Her price today was I deleted her from my friend list. I can control that. I also blocked her email. I left 8th grade drama in 8th grade. Grow up already. It was a simple request that turned you into a raving lunatic that I had to delete. Sheesh.

Want some cheese with that whine?