(eco) Small Print
The small print that people put under their e-mail signature has always baffled me. If you did get an e-mail by accident that by some miracle would be juicy enough for you to want to read it, never mind keep it, would you be put off by being told not to by the authoritarian instructions at the bottom?
Well, what’s really amusing me at the minute is the dozen or so exhortations I receive daily not to print this e-mail unless it’s really necessary. Let’s be clear, if it is not important enough to print, I ain’t going to print it whether or not the sender asks me not to. What do they take me for, some kind of idiot? And if I WAS dumb enough to print off every message I receive, I don’t think a little message at the bottom would make a damn bit of difference.
So why do it? I think it’s a “I’m much greener than yeeew!” statement – trying subliminally to get some environmental kudos without actually having to do anything other than type a few words. Well, they’ll have to work harder than that to impress me.
And how long before some smart-alec points out that the extra joules required to send those additional bits of information could power a lightbulb for 32 nano-seconds?