There are few things I love more than the Gmail spam filter. Not only does it allow me to simply forget about the existence of junk mail in most instances - it saves me the letdown and disappointment of going to check my mail and getting excited over a new message, only to discover that it’s just some PayPal scam. This way, when I see that I have a new message, I know it’s an actual message for me. Well that, or some ridiculous group invite on Facebook from someone I met once two years ago and will never speak to again.
It used to be the same way with physical mail. I would go and check the mail religiously after I got home from high school, sort through it as I walked back to the house, and would enter the front door either ecstatic with joy or crushed with disappointment over the joyous attention or dismal lack thereof the world had given me that. But either way - if I got a letter, it was good letter.
Jump forward to college, where New York University has managed to destroy both my electronic and physical mail standards. In order to get those one or two emails per semester you actually need, colleges make you sit through hundreds of pieces of email that apply to about half a percent of the student population. “Oh, there’s a meeting of Asian Republicans this afternoon at the student center? Good for them. Why the hell are you bothering me with this?” I get about 10 emails a day from my NYU email account. Not only are none of them interesting to me - 95% of them don’t even apply to me (messages directed at Seniors, for example. I would wager that, despite my AP credits, I am nevertheless not considered a Senior).
Same story with my physical mailbox - “Ooh! A piece a mail! Let’s go spend 30 seconds opening the lock. What’s this? A game? I’m supposed to find two other residents that got the same slip of paper in their mailboxes and then go enter a contest for a chance win an iPod Nano?” I’ve left out my explatives.
Why can’t they just leave me alone?
