Oh, grandma

[sabotabby]

Note for new friends: My paternal grandmother is a very weird crazy lady who, in recent years, has gained access to the internet. While in my nearly 30 years on the planet she has consistently failed to acknowledge my existence or spell my name properly*, I did somehow make it onto her e-mail spam list. She regularly sends me racist e-mail forwards set in Comic Sans, accompanied by blinky gifs.





Really, grandma? Really?

I need a tag for my grandmother's shitty forwards.

* Which is more justifiable since I found out that she was using "Egon Gron" as her internets name. Her name is not Egon Gron.

Comments

[lienne.livejournal.com]

Well, uh.

That image fills me with about 8% d'aww to 92% total bewilderment.

[sabotabby]

That it was created at all astounds me. Hence the need to share.

[shirl-64.livejournal.com]

HA!
So... I am not the only one with internet crazed family members.
Welcome to the club!

[sabotabby]

My father's sister is also bad, but not quite as prolific as gramma.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

That is a rather...xian gif. Peculiar.

[sabotabby]

I am thinking she might have converted. She sends me a lot of Christian shit too. But then, she sends me a lot of pro-Israel stuff, so who knows?

[frippy.livejournal.com]

[thebigbadbutch.livejournal.com]

This is far more internet appropriate.

[princessrugger.livejournal.com]

this needs to become a meme.

[austintacious.livejournal.com]

Dude, I feel you. My mother, step-mother and in-laws all send me the same shitty forwards. I like to refer to them as the "trojan horse emails" because you'll be dazed by some inane, sparkly (and usually Jesus-themed) animated .gif only to scroll down and be assaulted by a racist rant. I have learned to delete them without even opening them, though it's still tempting.

[sabotabby]

I get far, far too much amusement out of reading them.

She also sends me computer viruses, which isn't cool at all.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

One more reason not to reconsider my decision to stick with a text-only MUA[*] (and when I do open mail with a different client, that can handle HTML, I do it in an ssh window and the browser it invokes is Lynx). Not only does it make phishing mail way easier to spot, it also lets me skip past the blinky lull-you-into-a-false-sense-of-cute stuff (or, if they send me HTML-only, no plaintext part, it makes it easy for my spam filter to spot and throw away ...)

There is a place -- there are uses -- for HTML email. They're rare. I've had occasion to send HTML mail on purpose three times since it became possible.



[*] The real reasons are that it's a) a MUA where I can stand the UI, b) doesn't tie me to only reading mail from one computer or using webmail, c) uses an easily editable and greppable mailbox format, and d) does 98% of what I ever need a mail client to do. This text-only business is really just a fortunate side effect.

picture-free comment

[frippy.livejournal.com]

My Dad is a cipher when it comes to his copious email forwards. The more he emails me, the less I understand the man.

He sends me a lot of religious stuff, including articles from Rick Purpose-Driven-Life Warren's website, even though Dad identifies as liberal and finds Christianity and political conservatism to be at odds.

And he's a Christian but regular sends me essays written about the importance of Jewish traditions, Jewish history, and ruminations on Hebrew etymology. Dad was born Jewish but converted in his teens -- he loves celebrating his heritage, except for the part about not thinking Jesus is the Messiah. I guess Dad is an unofficial Jew for Jesus.

Dad also occasionally sends me bad jokes, too, usually of the three-ethnicities-walk-into-a-bar style, which can be especially baffling. My Dad told me as a child never to say I'd been "gypped" because the word is a slur against the Romany. And yet, recently, he sent me a joke in which a Chinese man gets "supplies" and "surprise" confused (the really offensive premise to the joke was that apparently not only can the Chinese man not say the word supplies correctly, he can't hear it, either).

I think newbies who get email should not be allowed to set up distribution lists until they have had their account for at least one year.

Re: picture-free comment

[sabotabby]

I think newbies who get email should not be allowed to set up distribution lists until they have had their account for at least one year.

Alas, she's been doing it for more than a year.

I really don't understand why people send the things they do over e-mail lists. It reveals some very interesting facets of their personalities.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

That mouse looks ripped off from the "If You Give A Mouse a Cookie" artist. If you give your grandmother an Internet connection, then she's going to ask you for your email address...

[sabotabby]

Hahaha.

(I didn't send her my e-mail address! I don't know how she got it—from my father, I guess. How he got it is anyone's guess.)

[funnel101.livejournal.com]

And when she gets your email address, then she's going to ask for a computer. And when she gets the computer, she'll want to know what those "windows" are, which will get here thinking about how dirty her windows are. So she'll ask you for...

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

Wow...

[dimethirwen.livejournal.com]

I used to get a lot of email forwards (mostly conservative) from all of my relatives.

To make it stop, I composed a long and sanctimonious letter about the ethical bankruptcy of society that leads people to spawn and forward misinformation (that is usually accompanied by racism, stupidity, etc). I sent it in response to every forward I got. After a while, they stopped coming. :)

[sabotabby]

When I have time, I compose individual responses.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

....EGON?

My mother-in-law's email account regularly sends us viruses. It's the only stuff we ever ge tfrom her.

[sabotabby]

I am thinking it's her boyfriend's name? Maybe? I just think of Ghostbusters.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the Catholic Church has established a Patron Saint of Online Friends yet?

[sabotabby]

I hope so.

[esizzle.livejournal.com]

new lj user icon ?

[sabotabby]

Old one.

[rrrao.livejournal.com]

Me and my brother just 'reply all' requested my mother yesterday to stop forwarding us (and by extension hopefully everyone else on her address list) crazy racist emails yet again - I was expecting your grandma to have sent you the 'Recent Muslim Demonstration' one (http://newsblaze.com/story/20060827211403nnnn.nb/topstory.html and http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/muslimprotest.asp), the one we just got.

It genuinely got my mom scared, especially because the problem with this one is not that the pics are doctored - they aren't, just taken out of context and given a spin that the whole Western Christian world should stop trying to 'make peace' with these 'obviously nice, peaceful Muslims'. So she wasn't forwarding out of bat-shit craziness, just out of a lack of ability to check it out for herself (she can work Hotmail, but not Google) and worse, because it was from some neighbours that she described on the phone as usually rational and intelligent, so she trusted that they were sending along something that was 'news'.

At least she sent a retraction and apology to the list for sending it after we told her.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

You MUST watch this. It is the first episode.

[sabotabby]

El oh el and also WTF?

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

omfg, I <3 it, hahaha!