Diss Regards

The other day I received an email from a person who had signed off with ‘Cheers!!’ Now, I’ve seen enough people sign off with ‘Cheers’ – but without the two exclamation marks. While nowhere near as common as ‘Regards’, it’s the informal, buddy way of signing off for people who don’t want to come across as being too stiff. It’s a bit like saying “Hey, just because I’m sending you an official email with words like ‘peruse’ and ‘do the needful’ doesn’t mean that I’m some boring corporate chap who’s sold his soul for a lifetime of great riches and eternal boredom. There’s a fun side to me – I sign off with Cheers, as if we’re in a bar enjoying a drink together.”

In the case of this Cheers, though, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I suppose it was the exclamation marks that threw me off. I grew up in simpler times - before the onset of text messages that ushered in an era of rampant abbreviations. Spare the rod and spoil the child was not just a literary expression but a guiding principle for most teachers, who ensured that not just the rod but also the cane, the duster and the knuckles were never spared in a suspiciously eager attempt to prevent said child from spoiling. An exclamation mark, then, could not be tossed about casually or sprinkled liberally without a care in the world. Like a good wine, it had to be rolled around, savoured gradually, lingered over and finally used very judiciously and with utmost discretion, only if a sentence contained something truly worthy of emphasis.

This isn’t how it is now – every second sentence on social media ends with something like this - !!!$$@!!!. While I'm no grammar nazi, a lifetime of conditioning has meant that I could never bring myself to it. My mind would grapple with technicalities like “Do I really need two dollar signs when one may convey the message just as effectively?” or with larger, more philosophical questions like “Would the person who reads this think that I’m a hysterical teenager?” Even a single exclamation mark would leave me agonizing over whether it actually needed to be there at all. “Does it emphasize the point too strongly? Is it making the sentence come off as too aggressive or desperate? Would a full stop be a more subtle way of conveying the point? Should I save it for a more critical or dramatic sentence that is more deserving of an exclamation mark?”

But coming back to the email signature, I’ve also seen many people use ‘Cheers!’ – but with one exclamation mark. At that level, it still feels like something that I can deal with. The feeling is approximately the same as ‘Cheers’, except that the person is trying to emphasize the Cheers in a more earnest way, like he truly means it. As if he’s announcing to the world “No, don’t mistake me for the guy who uses ‘Cheers’ just to convince everyone that he isn’t a boring corporate guy. I’m actually a very fun guy and just to emphasize that point, here’s an exclamation mark”.

However, two exclamation marks? It just seems excessively happy. Or jumpy. Or hysterical. Like the person has just won the lottery and is sending out the email. Or he’s just met his childhood idol and is sending out the email. It’s the sort of signature that makes you forget that the rest of the mail is a stinker and instead creates a picture of the guy being extremely thrilled each time he sends an email, jumping up and down all over the office, delirious with joy and frothing over in a frisson of excitement. At the very least, such a person would have to change his signature to ‘Gloom!!’ to be taken seriously if he wanted to convey genuine anger or disappointment.

All this got me thinking about official email signatures, and the one I use. 

Regards. 

That is without a shred of doubt the most boring, ineffectual way to sign off on an email. It says absolutely nothing at all. It’s a blank wall, a poker face. Whether it’s there or not makes absolutely no difference to the recipient of the email. I’m sure it didn’t start out that way. The person who first used ‘Regards’ in an email probably had noble enough intentions “Hey, I can’t just sign off with my name, that would look too curt. I must convey some sense of warmth/sincerity/respect without looking too friendly or casual.” Now, though, it’s absolutely generic – perhaps that’s the reason I end up using it. It gives nothing away.

The problem is every other variation on Regards tends to convey something more, and you may not always want to do that. There’s Warm Regards/Best Regards/Kind Regards/Thanks & Regards, which make you sound like a friendlier version of the person who simply says Regards. There’s ‘rgds’, which makes you sound like a busier version of the person who says Regards and therefore has no time for punctuation or typing the word out fully. Then there’s ‘BR’, which makes you sound like a cooler, more ‘with-it’ version of the busier person who has no time to type out Regards. The sort who would wish someone ‘HBD’ on his or her birthday and not think twice about it.

Oh, and finally there’s ‘br’, which makes you sound like the busier version of the already busy person who uses ‘BR’, someone so busy that there isn’t even the time to bother with punctuation while typing ‘BR’. Beyond that point, you’ve just attained a sort of email signature nirvana – you’ve risen above all these petty considerations and simply sign off with your name. Or better still, just your initial.

A.

Fw: Have You Ever Wondered?

You cannot help but wonder how some of the ideas that we take for granted today first came about. Take professional wrestling (the WWE kind), for example. Whoever came up with that idea for the first time? And I wonder how he managed to convince everyone else that it could be the next big thing. It probably happened at the Committee of Miniscule Percentage of People who Care About Wrestling, where someone suddenly said “Hey! I know how we can get more people to watch wrestling. This might sound a little crazy, but just stay with me on this one, ok? How about, instead of people actually wrestling, we just make them pretend that they’re wrestling?” Maybe cricket could take a leaf out of this and try this in order to popularise the sport beyond the current set of a dozen countries that play it – they could get people to pretend to play cricket, instead of actually playing it.

I’ve often wondered who came up with the idea for the first ever forward. What would he have been thinking – “Hey! This whole email thing is pretty neat. What an easy and convenient way to annoy others! Why don’t I send them mails that they have absolutely no use for and that do not make much sense? They would have no idea what to do with it, so they’d just pass it on to others.” I suppose that’s how it all started. While the inventor of the email would be a proud man indeed, surely his achievement has been partially blighted by the man who started the forward.

Over a period of time, through a careful combination of never forwarding emails and occasionally poking fun at the odd forward, I’d managed to steer myself clear of most people’s forwarding lists without hurting their sensibilities. This was hard work indeed, especially given the fact that each office/group has at least one or two serial mail-forwarders, they type of person who only appears in your inbox in the form of a forward, and seems to be the source through which every forward is routed. Of late, though, all that hard work seems to have come to naught as I’ve again been inundated with a series of forwards each competing with the other in terms of sheer inanity.

The first of these types of forwards is the “This-mail-will-bring-you-good-luck-believe-me-it’s-true” type:

“I am not normally the type who believes in these mails, but believe me, THIS ONE REALLY WORKS.

Mrs Leaden Foot’s husband had been missing since the First World War; she wished that he would come back to her. Within minutes of forwarding this mail to everyone on her list, there was a knock on her door – it was Mr Leaden Foot!

Bashir had lost his donkey to a terrorist suicide attack. He wished that he would get another donkey just as good. He forwarded this mail to 100 people and the next day, TWO donkeys AND a horse arrived in his courtyard!

Nine year-old Jamie’s life in school was made hell by the class bully, who would pull down Jamie’s pants every single day. Jamie wished that God would turn the bully into an orange frog, and forwarded this mail to his entire class. The next period, the bully was nowhere to be seen and an orange frog appeared out of nowhere in the school pond!

I know there is no logic, I know it makes absolutely no sense, I know that you have to be dumber than a lamppost to believe all this – but it actually DOES work. All you have to do is make a wish and scroll down.

(At this point, you REALLY have to scroll for a long long time)

Forward this mail to everyone you believe deserves to have their wishes come true.

Now that you have made your wish, all you need to do is count your age. Add this to your waist size, subtract your height and then multiply by e^π and apply differential calculus techniques to the result to arrive at a number. Your wish will come true in that many minutes.

But if you do not forward this to at least ten people, bad luck will haunt you for years to come. Fleas will nestle in your armpits, the Lord will smite you and the plague shall befall you. You will be declared a communist and forced to fight against Foreign Direct Investment. You will be made to watch every single episode of that TV show featuring Paris Hilton.”

Another very common type of forward goes something like this:

“The end is near; apocalypse is upon us. The founder of Orkut believes that people are no longer stupid and threatens to shut down Orkut. Forward this message to everyone on your list to show him that stupidity is alive and kicking. This is the only way to save Orkut. Else it will shut down and all our accounts will be deleted.”

A third type, even more annoying, is the one that makes the heartfelt appeal to your conscience to save a terminally-ill child. This one goes something like this:

“Ann Farthing is a four year old child who loves ice-cream. You would say “So? Every four year-old loves ice cream, what’s the big deal about that?” The big deal is that Ann is suffering from a condition of fibrosis herbiscular neuroflexoethnomer. This is an extremely rare condition, the odds of which are like a gazillion to one.  Her parents have tried every cure around the world for the last two years, without any success. You’d say “Well, that’s too bad then, tough luck. I feel sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” Well, you’re wrong. It seems a cure is possible, but it would cost $15 million!

Two weeks ago, Ann’s parents approached Bill Gates, who, being the complete nerd that he is, decided that this was absolutely the most appropriate opportunity to try a whacky social experiment. Instead of just giving the $15 million, Bill Gates decided that he would forward this mail to everyone he knew, and each time the mail was forwarded, one dollar would be added to Ann Farthing’s fibrosis herbiscular neuroflexoethnomer fund.

So please forward this to everyone on your mailing list if you do not wish to have the blood of four year-old Ann Farthing on your hands.”

Yet another common type is the inspirational, never-give-up-in-life stories, or stories about how well off we are in life and therefore should not be complaining. These often go something like this:

“Andy Warren was once a successful businessman who had it all – a supermodel wife, two doting kids and a house big enough to accommodate an entire village. And then tragedy struck. An earthquake destroyed his house, a car accident killed his entire family and a snake bite left Andy with just one leg.

However, Andy never lost his belief in God. Even when God told him “Look, I’ve got Israel-Palestine, Jihad attacks and Darfur to deal with. You think YOU’VE got problems???” it only made Andy more determined. He prayed all day and all night.

Over the years, stuff happened. Today Andy is happily married and owns a used-car dealership.

Remember: No matter how bad your situation seems, you could always be the subject of a forwarded mail and make a difference to other people’s lives. So never give up.”

And then of course there are all those “pictures speak louder than words” kinds of forwards, which are full of these pictures of cute furry animals or babies/kids and try to teach you important life-changing lessons about things like the power of human endeavour, the importance of sharing and so on. I am sure there are many more types that I would’ve missed out on – this list is probably an ever-expanding one.

But seriously, I still wonder how it all started. And who are these people who create these forwards? I mean, I’ve never seen anyone actually creating a forward, or met someone who’s told me “Oh, I create forwards for a living/in my spare time.” I guess we’ll never really know the answer to that one. In the meantime, you could forward this blog link to at least five people; else grave misfortune would befall Abhinav Behari for the next five years! ;)