Microsoft is Microaggressing Me
Dear Microsoft:
First, I hate you. Unfortunately, my workplace forces its employees to interact with you rather than allowing us to use gmail like civilized people.
I’m tired of digging my way through your non-intuitive labyrinth of “features” like some kind of animal.
Last week I sent a mass e-mail to a distribution list of which I’m a member, and you popped up a message that said, “Getting too much e-mail from Jennie Young?” and then offered me a link to unsubscribe. From myself. This is some sort of weird gaslighting thing, in which you trick me into believing that *I* am the problem here.
Your newest iteration, which I just “toggled off,” appears to be attempting to combine all the gmail-y and facebook-y features it can into one, uber- complicated e-mailing platform.
For example, I now have the ability to “like” an e-mail by clicking the thumbs-up icon in the upper right. You might think this is nice (and in a rare display of restraint you’ve not [yet] offered a “dislike” option), but what it really tempts me to do is to go through my entire inbox “liking” everything without further comment just to confuse everyone. And then I’ll delete my entire inbox. I know this isn’t your intention, but, you see, you’ve given me the option, and that’s dangerous for me. I just wouldn’t have expected this opportunity for committing professional suicide to be facilitated by the company that invented “Clippy,” whom I sincerely once believed to be my friend. It kinda feels like you’re setting me up, Microsoft.
Last week one of my students sent me an e-mail to let me know that she could not attend class because her grandmother died, and your “response suggestion” said “I love it!” Seriously, Microsoft — that’s twisted.
Fortunately I know better than to take your suggestions, but I resent that I have to always be so on-guard, so suspicious. I wish I could just trust you, could just take the things you say at face value, but there’s always some angle, isn’t there? Why do you appear to be helping me when really you’re just trying to screw me? Don’t you see how sick that is? I know it’s likely your own insecurities about how much you suck that lead you to engage in this passive-aggressive bullshit, but it’s toxic, and I can’t take it anymore.
I’ve also had it with your constant demands to be updated that require me to interrupt what I’m doing, acknowledge whatever your new thing of the day is, and then restart you. And you demand this under the guise of helping me, muttering some lame warning about “security threats” and whatnot, though the threat is always defined vaguely at best.
But what really gets me is your timing with these update popups — it’s almost like you need to be able to get my attention precisely because I’m in the middle of doing something else, like you just can’t stand to not be the center of my world, like you see me talking with someone else and feel the need to jump in between us and scream “LOOK AT ME!”
You might have borderline personality disorder, Microsoft, and that’s serious.
Wikipedia says that many scholars think the concept of microaggressions “promotes psychological fragility.” But I think you promote psychological fragility, Microsoft.
I don’t yet have an exit plan for this relationship because I need a job, but I’m not doing this with you forever. And when I finally break things off for good, I’m going to do it in such an ill-defined and confusing way that even your suggested reply generator will be stumped about what to say to me. But it won’t matter anyway, because I’ll have already imported everything to gmail and will be long gone, just like all the e-mails you’ve inexplicably wiped-out while I’m in the middle of composing them.
You’ll understand, won’t you, Microsoft? I mean, you’re okay with yourself the way you are, right?
