The Curious Case of the “Forward” Button

I am a self-confessed email addict – the kind who would refresh my inboxes every 5th second even on a super-hectic day at work. I was one of the early users of the internet / emails ever since school days and this habit has somehow struck even after commencing my career. Currently, apart from official purposes, I use the medium as a tool to connect with friends and family across the globe.

However, I notice more often than not that emails go much beyond sharing updates in lives with your near and dear folks. There are greater mail freaks around – the ones who find it so much fun to share not just worthwhile mail content, but also any kind of jokes or scenic pictures or stories/pictures of religious leaders/gods, celebrity gossips, man-woman gender based fun, and the list can really go on and on....

A little amount of pondering on what can be the reasons for this insurmountable urge to forward mails for no rhyme or reason led to the following possible thoughts:-

• too little work at office, too much spare time;
• it could be like a short break between hectic professional schedules or other chores;
• just an effort in reminding the recipients you still exist;
• you genuinely wish to forward a content that you have received over an email
• the mail you had received had threatened that catastrophe shall strike if you do not forward it to 50 email recipients within 5 seconds of your reading it;
• the originator of the mail had promised to ship across a mobile if you do not break the chain and forward it to 50 mail IDs (I wonder how even the most literate and rationale ones fall prey to this).
• a corporate house has agreed to sponsor the medical facilities of a cancer struck kid for every e-mail forwarded by you in the loop.
• no time to actually write out a mail – so forwards are a novel way to keep in touch (with absolutely no effort other than clicking the forward button)

While I do not delete any mail without reading, I must confess I do not enjoy bulk forwards which are merely transferred without any personal touch. I forward very very rarely, and send only the stuff which I feel MUST be reached to my friends. For someone who hates to have a cluttered mail box, my mail history would hardly be a day or two old at any point of time; and forwards sent on a one to many basis is normally not the most prioritized of all the mails - not even in personal inboxes. I find it more exciting to see my friend’s holiday snaps than the wedding snaps of some celebrity; similarly, its so much more insightful to introspect yourself than through some philosophical quotes forwarded on power-point presentations with soothing music and scenic background pictures.

If only we use our online presence, time and the bandwidth in a more useful manner – it could be for the simplest of joys like catching up with friends and sharing events/updates with the ones who matter or browsing through things which are customized to individual preferences or reading stuff which can bring in some value addition to our lives...

If only we learn to move beyond being rudimentary messengers transferring un-altered content from one inbox to several others, the world-wide web could indeed be a better place to stroll through.