Apologies, it’s time for a weekend rant. I know it’s all the rage right now to be green. but is it really necessary to put a line at the bottom of every email telling me to consider the environment and not to print it?
It was fine when just a few people did it last year (it was a ding against their startup, but didn’t necessarily kill a story), but now a significant percentage of emails coming in every day have some variation of the “do not print this email” message. Not everyone does it, just the condescending holier-than-thou types. But it happens often enough to have become a serious annoyance. For background on the “movement,” see this article.
You know what? I don’t need you to tell me that I need to be a good Earth citizen. I don’t print emails (no one does, you idiots), but if someone wants to I have no problem with it. Maybe they want to print out a map or something. I don’t think that makes them a bad person.
The same people who insist on wearing colored rubber bracelets to show their support for the cause du jour put this crap at the bottom of emails. My suspicion is that they don’t particularly care about the issue, they just want credit from everyone that they are a caring, thoughtful human being.
This isn’t the way to show support for the planet. Last week at Davos, Earth defender Al Gore himself made it clear that personal choice decisions at the individual level have little to do with helping the environment. What matters is that our governments make the right policies and hold us, particularly corporations, accountable. That isn’t happening yet. If you really want to change the world, start talking to your elected representatives. Or march on Washington.
Or even better, stop eating meat. Raising livestock causes more greenhouse gasses in the U.S. than all transportation combined (and, I bet, all email printing combined). So put down that hamburger and get out of my inbox.
Update: hah. I forgot we have a “Print Posts” button below every post, sponsored by HP. I encourage you to use it. And don’t forget Google Paper, Google’s April Fools joke, where “you can request a physical copy of any email with the click of a button, and Google will deliver paper printouts to you in 2-4 days via the mail.”
It’s meat not meet.
That was fun to read. I fully agree
Please don’t print this post unless you really need to. Thank you.
oh…that would have been a much better title.
Well there goes the email printing industry.
you have no idea how many people ACTUALLY print most of their emails.
Oliver,
You do?
Actually Michael….and you being a lawyer, you’re going to love this one…every time I visit my lawyer in the UK, they bring out a very very thick file with all my emails printed out in it….including the ones that say ‘thanks’ and then have all the previous conversation in them!
So - it’s not ‘normal’ people that this is aimed at….it’s lawyers!!
I for one will start and lead these following campaigns of internet denizen efficacy:
-Google ‘Print’ Buttons for Gmail — No Mo!
-Paint the TechCrunch wallpaper background Red — In Support of Causes!
-(alternately) Paint the TechCrunch wallpaper background Black — Wastes less energy on displaying!
-Change the facebook ‘Causes’ app name to ‘Cause’ — Their T-Shirts will use less ink!
Who’s with me?!
Same goes for the “If you received this email in error…” disclaimers.
hah. I added an update - I forgot that every one of our posts has a “Print Posts” button below it, sponsored by Hewlett Packard. I encourage you to use it.
Wow…Mike..when was the last time u got laid, my man?
You’re a bit of an ‘idiot’ for assuming that nobody prints out emails just because you don’t. There are a lot of computer-illiterate people that refuse to read emails on the computer and force their secretaries to print out the emails so they can read them on paper. I’ve heard of many instances of this.
Charlie - who cares! it’s a piece of paper. Jesus.
Awww, eating meat pollutes! I didn’t need to know that! Well, that’s one more thing to put in my portfolio of guiltiness…
nice bit of Friday evening reporting - i’m with you mike - thanks for the laugh
Michael, Believe it or not; there are several companies in Colombia for whom i’ve been hired that have as company policy to print and store every single email sent and received (at least at the “Executive” level, its also normal for a secretary to go through the company president’s email, read, print and then physically deliver in memo format)… small companies nonetheless, Some dumb mistrust in technology. Go figure.
-mp
Mike,
this post was hilarious. These “Green” types don’t have to be so damn smug, either.
— But i agree, anything beyond a signature at the end of emails i consider noise.
(sorry, fat finger submit)
-mp
Definitely a useless rant. Keep posting interesting news though!
This isnt up to the individual users in many cases - the company I work for (a top financial corp in NY) automatically adds this footer to bottom of every single email.
I use primopdf to print anything into PDF’s first. I think every computer should automatically add a PDF printer by default. The advantage is sometimes i print to the paper even if i don’t need it later, Just for my archive. For example, you did a online shopping and at the end it asks you to print the order summary, we print it and dump the paper later. But with PDF printer like PrimoPDF.com you can print it to PDF and send it to your email as attachment. You can always search for that email with the keywords and retrieve the attachment and print it if needed.
My 2 cents.
my dad used to print every email until he bought a laptop. he would go print out all his emails from the previous night every morning, and read them with his breakfast.
now he keeps his laptop on the kitchen table.
I get these emails w/ that “disclaimer” and I think its a desperate call for attention. With more and more people reading their emails on their mobile, there really isn’t a need to print. An observation, it is the ‘older generation’ that like to print or see/read documents on hard copy. Anyone agree?
I see these sigs all the time, and everyone who sends them to me is a lawyer or paralegal. Legal offices are notorious for wasting reams of paper. One study in CA claimed 75 reams of paper per attorney per year, four times the national average. That’s about four trees per attorney. The numbers keep going up each year for most firms because of their practice of printing everything.
There are quite a few dumb fucks - mostly at the executive level - who print emails. They are not “real” unless they are on paper. I could slap shit out of them.
Hear Ye, Hear Ye . . .
(shit, did my useless comment just eat up bandwidth and increase the amount of co2 in the atmosphere? oh well . . . I’m gonna buy myself one of these http://www.presto.com just to spite you all!)
Better yet, print each email that includes the signature line and snail mail it back to the sender with a handwritten note thanking them for their email.
And what about those random inspirational quote insertions after the email signature - can you get those stopped? And those graphical Plaxo signatures - get those banned too.
As a frequent flyer, I see many flyers/seatmates who carry file folders full of printed emails that they inevitably markup with a pen, then fire up their laptop and edit…emails. Again. At first I thought the paper email approach was to optimize billable time during take-off/landing but many of the same people read (paper, not e-) magazines or books during take-off/landing, then do paper email, then open up a laptop. I’d guess many of the paper email people are attorneys, accountants or financial services workers based on the leather or high end Tumi nylon briefcases with embossed/embroidered company names/logos.
Can someone explain the paper email + laptop email practice? It is too pervasive to be quirky behavior. There must be a reason.
will - oh my God. The presto. forgot about that too.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....ld-people/
Why can’t more bloggers take this position?!
Mike, thank you.
Please don’t breathe unless you absolutely have to.
Did you know that every time you breathe out, you are releasing the deadliest of greenhouse gasses… CO2?!?!? For the sake of the planet, and for the sake of the children, please stop breathing. If everyone would stop breathing, the planet could stop suffering our incessant CO2 emissions. Who cares that exhaling CO2 is a natural process, and that all plants NEED CO2 to survive and put out oxygen (you know, the stuff we breathe in so that we can survive)?
Or…if you insist on breathing out, please buy carbon credits from one of the companies Al Gore invested in before hyping up global warming which then made him excessively rich. I’m sorry, did that sound cynical?
Mike - decaf, brother. Who cares what people put in their emails? Who cares if they print their emails? Take a deep breath . . . .
belly breathe. calmer now.
I used to be like Kyles dad, and yes i agree it probably is the older gen that abuses that option to print, but i gave it up early in the 90’s when i realized i then just had a bunch of stacks of unread mail laying around.
But let some Tree Hugging wanna be tell me not to print, geeze
PRINT AWAY!
Why does it seem like this whole friggin “green” thing comes and goes every few years……… oh yeah….. FAD! Screw it, im turning all the lights on.
Hi Mike -
I’m an IT consultant, so I interact with a lot of organisations where IT is just a service dept, not a primary function. I’m assuming from the content of this website that your interactions are with people who live and breathe internet.
Even though I’ve been working with non-IT folks for years, I’m still stunned by the number of people who print out *everything* (not just emails). And it’s not just older folks or management types — I see plenty of 30 something office workers who only feel they’ve accomplished work if they’ve printed something out and put it in a neatly labelled lever-arch folder in their bookcase. I know it seems stupid, but it’s really common.
So for those people, whacking that line of text at the bottom of emails is really a good idea.
And just to take a step back and get some perspective:
- how often do you read to the bottom of emails anyway?
- do you really care THAT much about it?
Looks to me like you couldn’t find anything else decent to post but need to update the website, so you ranted about the first thing that came to mind.
Why not just rehash the MS/Y! story?
Cheers,
Stewart
I started reading the title “Hey, You Condescending Jerk..” and I thought you were writing about yourself…… honest..
Stewart - hah, Kyles Dad. I replaced the picture of Gore and Bono with a shot of the Toyota Pious. For those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smug_Alert!
Why does your HP print button want to print off 30 posts dated back to 2005?
I print emails on recycled paper. Is that wrong?
I’m not sure. I’ve never actually clicked it.
I will do my part to “save the planet” by eating the cows. The green industry is a joke and a scam.
I love to hear about people trying to stop climate change. If anything, that could have a far, far worse effect than a single degree change in a few hundred years. The only thing I would be worried about regarding climate change is if it stops changing.
Then again, arguing against climate change changers never works because they don’t exactly follow the guidelines of scientific research. Suggesting “all scientists agree” is probably the most invalid statement in the history of science, and is incredibly limiting.
hahaha, i laughed out loud at the update! Greenies (my coinage for people for a green living) see change as embodying an image not action. Watch a TED talks sometime and you will see real ideas that make a difference.
Don’t be an arrogant prick. Many, many people print their emails. It’s not the fact that I care that they do (from your response to one Charlie), it’s that you are arrogant enough to assume that because you think it’s uncool, then it doesn’t exist. Get your head out of your ass.
“Last week at Davos, Earth defender Al Gore himself made it clear that personal choice decisions at the individual level have little to do with helping the environment. What matters ….”
I agree with what come after “what matter”. But the part before that is a lame excuse. So Mr. Gore somehow convinced you that what you do does not have an effect. Well one person can make a difference and as cheesy as that sounds it is quite true.
All in all, the post was very cynical and one of the worst I have seen on Tech Crunch - or any website for that matter. So I have decided to go by the name of “Please don’t print this comment unless you need to” for all future comments.
this is a great topic. i will have to start putting this on all my emails. i have the “If you recieved this email in error delete it or you will have bad luck for many years.” or something like that.
Why do you have to use language like “jerk” and “idiots” just because some people have a difference of opinion with you ? I don’t think that makes them an idiotic person. Sure, lots of people print email, especially the elderly. If I were often sending mail to such people, reminding them about printing etiquette via a line in my signature does no harm. Those who don’t need the advice are free to ignore it.
and btw, is this how startups get “dings” and their stories “killed” at techcrunch ? OMG, I must remember to tailor my signature to Lord Michael’s personal preferences, otherwise my startup might wind up in the deadpool before I even get started.
classic mr angry pants. good stuff. welcome to the club.
Your mother asks that I print all of your posts! I’ve told her it isn’t necessary, but she’s afraid ‘the computer’ will will fail when she wants to read them.
Please talk to her! She doesn’t believe me when I tell her that printing this stuff will cause a massive tsunami in Washington, so convince her it is so!
dad