Just unsubscribe me from your bloody email
Stop checking if I really want to unsubscribe. I do. Just unsubscribe me.
For a period of six months last year I compiled and wrote a weekly newsletter. More than anything, it was an experiment in whether I could build and maintain a consistent writing habit. The result of the experiment was that I could, but the writing wouldn’t be that great, and it wouldn’t always be very interesting.
Those newsletters now live here, although I appreciate I have not sold them to you.
While writing that newsletter, I also subscribed to and read a lot of other newsletters. At one point I had subscribed to 128 of them. Many of them weren’t much better than mine, but even the good ones quickly got repetitive. I’m now subscribed to 9 newsletters, so at some point I have unsubscribed from 119 newsletters. And in doing so, I have been regularly confronted with this message, or a message like it:
At first, I barely even registered these prompts.
After unsubscribing from about 20 newsletters, I started tutting when I saw them.
After around 40 unsubscriptions (probably not a word, but that’s not our concern here) I could feel my jaw clench each time I saw one.
Around 70 unsubscriptions in, I started constructing torturous analogies when I saw them (It’s like getting off a hovercraft, and someone asking you if you would really like to traverse a body of water on a large obsolete cushion. It’s like getting out of a paddling pool full of custard, and someone asking you if you would really like to GET IN to a PADDLING POOL FULL OF CUSTARD).
And for each subsequent event, I have become incrementally more annoyed.
So I would just say this to anyone who provides opt out services to any mode of communication. If I hit unsubscribe, it isn’t because I’m undecided if I want to carry on receiving your message. It isn’t because I’ve tripped over a loose rug and bumped the unsubscribe button with my big wobbly arse as I hit the ground.
I want to unsubscribe. Just unsubscribe me please.
