Sigh

[yendi]

In an effort to get somewhere close to Inbox One Thousand (because Inbox Zero is so far out of reach, it might as well be on another planet), I'm attempting to reduce the amount of "bacn" -- email that's not spam, as I've opted in, and stuff I don't mind getting, but which I'd rather get less of, or at least less frequently. Basically, it ends up piling up unread.

So, since I really don't need Goodreads sending me a list of updated books read by friends every day, I went to their preferences page Right at the top, there's a nice drop-down marked "Send me new reviews from friends:" with options for Daily (the default), Weekly, or Never. I changed to Weekly, and got a message saying that my changes had been saved. But going back to the screen, the drop-down still said Daily. So I tried it again. And a third time. Then I tried "Never," and got the same result.

Now, Goodreads also has a lot of triggered emails, for when people leave comments, add me as a friend, etc. I wanted to keep these, but after four attempts, I went to the nuclear option at the bottom of the screen, "Unsubscribe from all Goodreads emails." Which worked like a charm.

But yeah, because their drop-down didn't work for one setting, I've now removed all of their emails. Which is what happens when you have bad quality control.

And yes, the next two options would have been (in order) deleting my Goodreads account and marking all of their emails as spam. And for anyone wondering why I didn't just email them and wait patiently, that's not my responsibility. I wanted to reduce my e-clutter now, and given the nature of my relationship with Goodreads (where they're far from essential), I felt no need to wait (especially since a response, even one that comes in a few hours, will likely just go on the clutter pile, as I'll be falling behind again).

I've had variations of this with dozens of other companies, of course, ranging from the ones that, for some reason, claim that people can't be removed from mailing lists in any shorter a period that seven days, to ones that don't even provide anything close to an easy way out (those get spamblocked).

Comments

[elizabear.livejournal.com]

I went through the same bacn process today, deleting about 1gb of unread mail from mailing lists I used to read and then unsubscribing from them. I feel better already. Clutter has a real negative psychological effect, and this was email clutter.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

It's nice having the nuclear option. Either they can make their e-mail crap configurable, or I nuke them. No problem. Google is great at nuking unwanted mail. They may feel good about sending out the crap, more power to them. They aren't accomplishing their goal, but they get to feel good about themselves.

[greylistening.livejournal.com]

Gah. Yes. This reminds me of my first exodus from FB.

[heathrow.livejournal.com]

You know, this may be the best post I've read on LJ in a month. I can't get my personal email under 2k to save my life and it's crushing me with guilt.

Time to go cook some bacn.

[blitheandbonny.livejournal.com]

I thought I was being clever by signing up for stuff like that and adding "+junk" into my email address, so that it would auto-filter into a label I called "CRAP" and so I wouldn't have to look at it in my inbox and I could just leisurely browse it occasionally. And all that worked, except I NEVER looked at any of it, and finally I just either unsubbed or auto-deleted all of it. Which is all a really long-winded way to say you're much smarter than me.