A few months ago, I decided I needed to sort out my emails.
Specifically, how many I was receiving each day.
That’s not a fucked-up, humble brag … it was because after decades of internet use, I’d acquired so many companies sending me their shit because I’d either once ordered from them or made an enquiry to them, that it was genuinely costing me time in my day.
So, over the period of a week I vowed to ‘unsubscribe’ from 98% of every company email I received – with only a few organizations surviving the cull because I either found them genuinely valuable and interesting and/or their were legal implications if I didn’t act on what they sent me.
So off I went.
Every morning, I’d go through each email … find the ‘unsubscribe’ button, which would be hidden somewhere in the body copy, normally at the very, very bottom … and then watch my browser open up to the corresponding website so I could ‘click’ on the metaphorical, ‘FUCK OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE’ FOREVER button and say goodbye to them forever.
Or so I thought.
Because some of those links didn’t open.
Some of those links didn’t automatically let you unsubscribe.
Some of those links had a messed-up UX that manipulated you into resubscribing without initially realizing.
Some of those links demanded you then jump through all manner of hoops before they would acknowledge you had achieved your goal.
And some of those links just ignored your request and kept sending you emails like a technological cockroach who refused to die.
And even after spending FIVE WORKING DAYS pressing ‘unsubscribe’ so often that I probably need a job number to justify all the time I spent doing it … and even after giving every one of these companies a week to get their shit together … there’s still 7 companies who keep sending me their bullshit.
EVERY. DAY.
Despite me unsubscribing from them again and again and again.
In some ways I’m almost impressed at how little they care about upsetting their audience … even though I have to admit, it has made me hate them with a zeal normally reserved for the true bastards of the world/
But what is also weird, is the companies who made unsubscribing easy – without fuss, mess, complexity or further demands – has made me want to sign up to them again. Because nothing shows how much a company really cares about their customers than how well they treat them even when it’s so they can say goodbye.
Have a great weekend.