🔗 It’s Time To Give Up On Email - The Atlantic:
Also in your inbox: All of the email you get that is, you know, actually related to your job, your interests, or your personal life. Forget reading or responding; even just finding those messages amid the junk can be a chore. Email has felt overwhelming for a long time now, with all of its spam and scams and discount codes. But what used to be a vexatious burden is now a source of daily torment. Email cannot be reformed. Email cannot be defeated. Email can only be forsaken.
Look—I get that even relatively high-profile writers like Bogost have deadlines and probably a minimum number of posts they have to write. And I also get that is super easy to dunk on email.
That said, this article is just dumb.
TBH, I have very little sympathy for people who complain about email like this, because mostly they have done it to themselves. They have signed up for a billion things, they don’t avail themselves of basic tools, they don’t unsubscribe from stuff, and they generally do a crap job of staying on top of the email they properly should be receiving.
“But but but,” you say, “I shouldn’t have to do all that! If email had been designed properly, it should do all that for me! It’s broken!”
You know what? Okay, sure. And I should be able to never put gas or oil in my car, not wear a seat belt, not have antilock breaks, and pay no attention to the bald-ass tires. It should just work!
Email is not broken or unmanageable. It’s a tool, and you need to tend to it, manage it, put some effort into it.