The Unrivaled Beauty of ‘Unsubscribe’

Recently, I have been hitting the ‘unsubscribe’ button with great frequency. There is a practical reason for this, and at first that was my only thought on the subject, but I’ve found that the more I do it and the fewer promotional emails I receive, the lighter I feel--seriously.

Project Unsubscribe started as an effort to tidy up my inbox. I already have ‘Social’ and ‘Promotions’ folders (thanks, Gmail) but they were getting out of hand. I’m one of those people who has to have a tidy inbox at all costs, so clearing out the advertising emails several times a day was a compulsion. The thing about promotional emails, though, is that you start getting them because you’ve purchased something. This tips off the marketing department at whatever company from which you bought the thing, and they start trying to coerce you into buying more things.

Let’s face it--it usually works.

I am only human, and, as such, am not immune to the dulcet whispers of words like ‘SALE’ and ‘BOGO’ and ‘X percent off’. A deal is a deal, amirite? But here’s the thing: it’s seldom really that good a deal, and when you get a new one each week you’re more likely to splash out because “there was a coupon”! And you sit there and you think, “I don’t have to buy things. I can quit anytime I want!” Eventually, though, you realize that you definitely have a problem, and an awful lot of t-shirts.

I started with the worst offenders--stores like Old Navy and Target. They send several emails a day with different ‘deals’ and whatnot, sometimes five or six of them. It’s ludicrous. Of course they try to keep you on their distribution lists with cutesy graphics and sappy “Is it really over?” type blurbs above the ‘Unsubscribe’ button. Honestly it smacks of desperation, though you know full well that losing one subscriber to their emails can’t possibly have the potential to make even the tiniest dent in their prolific profit margins. The loss of those particular incessant sales plugs was fabulously freeing, let me tell you. I don’t miss them at all, and at no time in the last however many days since I’ve stopped getting them have I thought, “I wonder how much shorts are going for at the moment?”

The next to go were the slightly less frequent ones like Amazon and ModCloth and Discount Dance Supply. (Hey, dancewear is expensive.) Amazon and DDS were fairly cut-and-dried in their approach to unsubscribing. They didn’t even have a secondary “Are you sure?” page, just one click and “You are now unsubscribed.” The simplicity was almost alarming. ModCloth on the other hand was vaguely melodramatic and asked about six times if I was absolutely sure I didn’t want to receive emails from them any more. “You might miss something!” “Nah, I’m good, thanks.” “Okay, but we have different distribution lists for different things. Don’t you want to stay on just a few of them?” “Nope, not really.” “Why don’t you love us anymore?!” “Please stop clinging to my leg, you’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

After that it was just a few smaller mailing lists, and those went away quietly, with dignity. You could learn something, ModCloth. I’ve kept myself on things like job alerts from Indeed and Glassdoor because that’s just sensible and no one is asking you to spend any money, though I did toy with the idea of unsubscribing myself from literally everything just because the sheer reduction in inbox clutter had been so delightful. I may still do that, but not just yet.

It may seem like a small thing, but it’s had a HUGE impact on my day-to-day. Not only am I spending significantly less time deleting useless emails, but the siren song of “Buy more t-shirts, come on, you know you want to...they’re cute...and look, we put them on sale…” has dwindled to a vague wisp of what used to be.

...That was ludicrously poetic.

Really, though, it’s a vast improvement. I don’t think I fully realized just how oppressive all those stupid emails were--even if I didn’t take the time to look at them, I was still deleting them several times a day just so the backlog didn’t become insurmountable. I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this before. It’s such a simple solution! It just makes it go away, and when it’s gone, you don’t miss it at all. (My bank balance certainly doesn’t miss it, either.)

It’s funny how the weirdest little things can make such a difference.

I feel so free! ::skips around chucking daisies everywhere::