What Emails Are You Getting? October 3, 2008

What Emails Are You Getting?

By Guest Contributor
October 3, 2008

Here’s a new meme for you:

Categorize the 20 most recent emails in your inbox. Spam doesn’t count.

What do they say about you?

For me at this moment:

5 exchanges with site readers

3 questions/comments from site readers

2 from the Secular Coalition for America

1 from the Barack Obama campaign

1 receipt from Amazon

1 request to review a book

1 e-Receipt for my electric bill

1 from MoveOn.org

1 exchange with a personal friend

1 regarding a speaking gig from over the weekend

1 from my grad school professor regarding midterm review session times

1 from a potential advertiser on the site

1 from the Secular Student Alliance

What did I expect?

More emails from the SSA. Though over the weekend, I suppose there aren’t as many…

What did I learn?

My personal friends and I don’t email each other often enough…

This site owns me.

…

What does your email say about you?

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What Are Your Thoughts?leave a comment
  • SarahH

    All mine are correspondence with professors, mom, friends and you (not that you’re not a friend!), news from my college, updates about my facebook wall/messages, and one receipt from iTunes. I’m quite satisfied.

  • Milena

    5 from a scholarship organization that was supposed to mail me my cheque on the 1st of September and with which I’ve been dealing for about a month (finally got it yesterday)

    3 from my city’s Bulgarian Community

    3 from my university’s debating society

    3 from my mom

    2 from my aunt

    2 from Barack Obama’s campaign

    1 from Greenpeace

    1 from the editor of the Bulgarian newsletter for which I write (asking me where my article is… late as always, of course.)

    It seems like I’m much more involved in activities that interest me than in actual human relationships. Hell, since I started university, I’ve stayed in touch with very few high-school friends, who all ended up going to my city’s other university. Maybe it’s about time I emailed a couple of people…

  • My top 20 e-mails tell me that I should stop leaving comments on my own blog, and that I should probably start marking those worthless newsletters cluttering my inbox as spam. Really…not a pretty picture overall….

  • Gabriel

    Lucky basterds. All I get is spam.

  • Elsin Ann Perry

    Two from my daughter, two from son; twelve from twin sister, one from Obama campaign, one, AlterNet; receipt from Amazon.com, one from editor of local newspaper.

    So it’s obvious that my twin sister and I are close and that I support Obama.

    Great question, Hemant!

    And I’m selfishly glad that your site “owns you.” When the alarm goes off in the morning, before I do ANYthing, I get on your site. You make my life happier, and I’m sure a lot of your regular readers feel the same way. Thank you for all that you do, friend.

  • Shelley Mountjoy

    2 – spam from real-estate agents
    17 – Beltway Atheists related coorespondence
    1 – Friend… asking about a group going to Religulous tonight

    What did I expect?
    I keep marking those two real-estate agents’ mail as spam so hopefully one day they will actually end up in the spam folder as opposed to my inbox.

    What did I learn?
    Beltway Atheists owns me. I should probably spend more time on my campus group.

    Interesting exercise, Hemant… and ditto on the thanks for your work here and with the SSA. 🙂

  • sc0tt

    I have seven e-mail accounts and use them for different purposes so below is an amalgamation sort of sorted by volume:

    Some from Obama and Democratic party
    Some from readers of my blog
    Some from friends and family
    Some from Kay Hagan (thanks Hemant)
    Bank and credit card notices
    Opportunities for penis enlargement et sim.

    What did I learn?
    I think I have my spam filters set about right.

  • bubbaj

    It’s high time you made this site your bitch hemant. Put the “smackdown” on it and show it whose boss!!!

  • Nicole

    19 Alerts from fanfiction.net
    1 from my mom.

    I apparently need to get a life.

  • belongsomewhere

    7 regarding the election (4 from theObama campaign, one of each from Move On, Hillary Clinton, and Rock the Vote)
    7 from my college’s SDS organization
    1 from eBay
    1 Lolcats daily mailing
    1 from Fancast.com
    1 from Who What Wear Daily
    1 from Urban Outfitters
    1 from Live Nation

    This is pretty much what I expected, unfortunately…

    I learned that I am on far too many mailing lists and that political involvement rules my life these days, which I guess is more of a good think than a bad thing, anyway. Also, this makes me remember that I should really not shop at Urban Outfitters, because the owner donates a lot of his money to high-powered republicans…

  • 1 from my dad
    2 from the Obama campaign
    1 from a campus environmental group
    2 receipts for a bus from Boston to NYC to Buffalo
    4 from Facebook
    2 from a campus fiction mag I work on
    1 sad little postseason update from Cubs.com
    1 from Ticketweb
    2 from a campus sketch comedy TV show I work on
    2 from someone in my film department about a festival field trip
    1 from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
    1 from my live comedy troupe.

    I lead a crazy ass life. College.

  • Derek H.

    I would estimate that at least half are from Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden or other people from the Obama campaign. And then, throw in a bunch from Al Franken and my inbox is full.

  • The twenty there at the moment are stuff I haven’t deleted yet. We’re going back to August… It doesn’t really tell me about what I get, only what I keep.
    8 various account info mailings
    7 class-related texts or notes
    1 song lyric
    1 Wayne Besen column
    1 ACTFL professional survey (need to do that)
    1 query about something I’m writing
    1 political video

    It doesn’t really reflect what I get – which would normally have a lot of headlines, campaign mailings, notes to myself sent from work, and family banter.