A New Kind of Content Filter
I have quite an awful habit. It is email. The thing is that I’ve developed this email ‘voice’ that isn’t entirely pleasant. It isn’t awful ALL of the time… It tends to be worse in the morning—and look out if I’m actually upset about something. But, you see this voice really isn’t me. I suspect my friends know that. My wife certainly knows it and I’d guess that the people I work closest to every day know it too.
Email is such a tricky thing. There are no facial expressions, no body language, no eye contact… None of the OTHER frequencies we transmit on get picked up in an email. It is pretty much just black and white on the page.
I’ve understood all of this for quite some time. But I just can’t seem to get a handle on it. Maybe I’m just too damn impulsive. Maybe I’m just a fool. Whatever it is I can’t seem to reign in that urge to hit the send button – usually after cc’ing everyone from you to God.
Despite my bad habits I do tend to be a clever guy from time to time. I believe I may have come onto a rather brilliant idea today and I’d like to share it with you.
You know how we filter incoming email for junk and spam? Well what if we had an OUTbound mail filter?
It would be a little bit similar to those “are you sure you want to close without saving this file” prompts, or that particularly annoying Microsoft Office thing that says “It looks like you are writing a letter…” - except that it would detect things like the over usage of the CAPS KEY, profanity, or derisive language. In fact we could even program our deepest secrets, our biggest resentments, and add special filters for people we like, or hate, the most.
Upon detecting a potentially damaging email, say one that might get us fired or just make us look like a plain old jerk, the program would pop up a special warning message or prevent us from sending the email altogether.
This is a piece of software that would change my life.
As I rode the A Train home this evening, I imagined what some of these warning prompts might look like.
Say, that sentence in the fifteenth paragraph really makes you sound like an arrogant ass. Click here to cancel.
You’ve neglected to enter your age in the default settings, but it is suggested you avoid such excessive use of capital letters if you are over the age of twelve.
Do you talk like that to your mother?
This is really sweet, but are you quite sure he/she is ready for the ‘L’ word? How about some nice X’s and O’s instead?
It appears from the copious spelling and grammar mistakes in your email that you may be drinking again. Why not sleep it off, or click here for help with that problem. We can forget this ever happened.
The filter has detected that you are attempting to forward a gag email to 53 of your closest friends, all addressed in plain view on the cc line. Is it really that funny? Click here to quit.
Aunt Trudy in Sheboygan has dial-up. May I remove this 20MB bitmap of your cat?
Images stolen, Photoshop by me.
