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By
Anne Meyers
Cox Newspapers
On a recent trip we stayed with friends. My girlfriend was
showing me her computer, and an e-mail joke appeared.
The joke contained references to drunkenness, adultery and
public indecency. It was not a very funny joke and seemed
even more tasteless considering the source was a 15-year-old
relative.
The e-mail prompted a conversation about the unwanted e-mail's
that she receives from friends. She described one e-mail
with cartoon images of President Clinton involved in unpresidential
activities and another e-mail with naked men in baseball
caps.
The bad jokes put her in an awkward position. Should she
ask the senders to refrain from sending jokes, or should
she just delete them without insulting anyone?
I believe she should request to be taken off her friend's
and family's joke mailing lists. Why should anyone feel
obligated to accept unwanted and offensive e-mail's? This
computer, like many family computers, is shared among the
two adults in the home and a grade-schooler. Her daughter
does not need the added education provided in these e-mail's.
Bad jokes traveling through cyberspace end up in businesses
as well as homes. Many people complain about receiving these
offensive e-mail's at their work addresses.
These jokes are more alarming to some computer users than
spam because they know the senders. They should also be
easier to eliminate than mass mailings. There should be
required cyber-education to tame the reckless in cyberspace.
One key lesson would be to treat your e-mail's as if they
were your conversation. Would you walk into a luncheon with
friends and pass around cartoons of naked men? Would you
put them in envelopes and send them through the U.S. Postal
Service? Why would you e-mail them? Would you tell dirty
jokes at the playground? Why would you send them to those
same people from your home computer?
"We expect other drivers to observe the rules of the road,
and the same is true as we travel through cyberspace," according
to LearntheNet (www.learnthenet.com)
on it's netiquette page.
Netiquette, or etiquette for the Internet, should begin
with basic courtesies. E-mail users should not waste time
and space sending unwanted messages. Senders should refrain
from mailing dirty jokes to every e-mail address they know.
The inappropriate use of e-mail is growing, and someone
ought to tell computer users to follow a decent code of
conduct.
There are many Web sites with advice on Internet etiquette,
including www.albion.com/netiquette/introduction.html.
I have asked to be removed from these lists and have maintained
relationships with the jokesters.
Tell your friends how much you enjoy their actual conversation.
Then ask them to take you off the jokes, prayers or other
nonsense lists if you do not wish to be included. Good friends
will find a better way to communicate with you.
If you are not getting enough jokes, you can sign up for
joke mailing lists or read them at Web sites. The Jokester's
joke list (www.jokester.com/listinfo.html)
is a free subscription-based service (intended for mature
audiences).
Try JokesEveryday (www.jokeseveryday.com/)
for its clean sense of humor. Join the more than 70,000
subscribers at JokesEveryday and receive three jokes each
day for free.
Choose from clean or dirty jokes, or subscribe to receive
both at www.emailajoke.com/.
Read jokes without subscribing at Fat Days (www.fatdays.com/jokes/)
where favorites are noted with a star.
Services like these are advertising-supported, so expect
to read promotional material between laughs.
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