Anthropology of email

Ritual gift exchange?

Forwarding a genuinely amusing or interesting link to a friend, for example, shows that you are thinking of them and are aware of the sort of content they like, [author Benjamin] Gross says. But passing an irrelevant or out-of-date link on to contacts can be annoying, thus lowering the sender's social status in the recipient’s eyes.

"If they are consistently wrong about what content is of actual interest to recipients their reputation may drop in the implicit system people must apply in order to [prioritise] their email," Gross writes in a paper co-authored with Jeff Ubois at the University of California, Berkley, and Marc Smith at Microsoft Research in Redmond, both in the US.

Yes but how do you deal with someone who keeps sending you things that aren't funny, relevant or interesting?

I remember working in a three-person office with someone who kept sending me things like prayers and chain letters--not to mention unfunny jokes--constantly. I didn't want to say anything for fear of making things difficult at work. And. of course, after she spent the night sending these "cute" things to me and getting no response, she'd quiz me in the morning at work. "Did you get my email?" "Yeah, good one." Finally, after one particularly egregious chain letter, I told her she must never, ever send me another chain letter. I left the job soon after.