The Pragmatician

EMMAIL-Electronic MIS MAIL


I run a modest mailing list of people I send jokes to.
I get daily jokes in my 5 email boxes from three different people; I proofread them and the best ones I forward to friends and family.
While I take the time to forward the good ones and attach all the documents and images, only rarely do I get feedback.
When I meet someone I always ask them if they enjoyed that week’s jokes and they usually nod or say they had heard them already. No thanks or appreciation. All things considered, all I do is forward an email.
Not a big endeavor, true, but replying with a kind word is even less of an effort.
But woe to me if I don’t send emails out for a couple of days. All of a sudden they rember how to send an email not just receive one. “Hey where are you”, “what’s happening”?
The point is I don’t expect a reply anymore. These people are good friends and for some strange reason they are rude and unappreciative when it comes to online dealings.
I have come to the realization that the people you see regularly consider anything written on the net, be it by email or msn as somehow not real.
An appointment made on MSN has to be confirmed on the phone or by text message, otherwise it's considered net-ranting.
The ease with which things are written to known and anonymous people, make it possible to invent complete new identities for oneself.
I’ve noticed about myself that exaggerating something I did is so much easier online than in person or through the phone.
When I write “I looked him right in the eye and said No Way!, If told in person it would sound a lot less assertive.
Perhaps this explains the reason my emails are not seen as anything worth mentioning when outside the web world.

This morning I forwarded a really great video clip (thanks Normal Jew) to my wife and the other 7 people on the list.
Having the afternoon off from college, she replied to the email.
Unfortunately she’s not very computer, or internet literate for that matter, and her reply was sent to all recipients of the jokes.
She probably hit the “reply to all” button instead of just “reply”.
This wouldn’t be a major deal, were it not that she wrote something quite embarrassing (I know it’s Ellul but she didn’t mean it the way it looks) about one of the subscribers.
Not only can he see her reply, all the other can too.
I’ m at loss on how to handle this.
Should I call him and explain? Should I send an email to the list apologizing? The pragmatic thing to do would be to tell him it was a mistake and that it won’t happen again.
The question is whether the pragmatic thing is the right thing to do in this case?
Any opinions?