For Those Who Keep Spamming Me With PR E-mails: Sassy Asthmatic Replies
For whatever reason, I get a lot of spammy e-mails from public relations firms, spamming me with nonsense e-mails I don’t care about. Usually, I delete them, report to Gmail as spam, and don’t do much else. (Pro-tip: hitting unsubscribe in e-mails to which you never subscribed to in the first place can lead to more spam.)
It turns out I should also not be replying to those e-mails either, according to the wise ol’ Internet. (Who knew your asthma reading was turning into technology reading? You’re welcome.)
But since I already have unsubscribed (and will promptly stop), I thought I’d share with you my most recent sassy reply.
Make sure your spam at least suits the receiver
Today I was cleaning out my inbox and I found an e-mail from a perfume company’s PR representative. This is the problem with past-life Kerri publicly sharing her e-mail address rather than just putting a contact form on her website. (Current-life Kerri also has at least one e-mail address publicly available. Oops.)
Except, like, asthma, maybe enough knowledge to know that I have multiple chemical sensitivity, and that I do not, of all things, care about your perfume spam.
As such, having learned my lesson about not unsubscribing (but not yet learned my lesson about not replying), here is what I replied:
If you did any sort of research before spamming me with this email, you would know I am a severe asthmatic with multiple chemical sensitivity and do not care about this product and wish others did not use such products.
Please remove me from your mailing list.
Clearly, I do not give a [insert preferred expletive here] about "A Scent for 2020”.
Where’d my other sassy replies go?
I know I’ve semi-recently sent other sassy replies like this in response to these e-mails. Whether it’s a good thing for my sanity that I can’t find it, or a bad thing because of how overrun with spam it indicates my inbox is, I’m not sure. I did find one, from someone wanting me to share an article on inhalers with my audience, to which I replied like this:
Thanks for your e-mail.
Please let me know if you are seeking blogging or editing services; I can also provide feedback on company sites/blogs such as this on a consultant basis if that is desired. I would be happy to discuss rates in either case.
They never came back. And I presume they could tell I didn’t mean the thanks.
Either way, why can companies never e-mail me useful unsolicited PR garbage? Like, stuff that involves free pizza or announces a new cupcake arriving at Starbucks (okay, Starbucks would tell me that themselves), or even something that does not involve the 17 food items I like. There was also a span of time where I got a lot of PR e-mails about Philadelphia, despite the fact that I don’t live there!
Asthma spam
It is true, I get a lot of asthma spam and PR emails like this. And no, I really don’t want them. I would say at least they’re targeted properly, but honestly, it feels like a personal attack of sorts! One day, hopefully, I’ll crush the asthma spam entirely…
Maybe by then we’ll have a cure for asthma, too? Ha ha ha!
Seems I’m a cynic in both regards.
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