Adding

Twitter has the concept of the twitter canoe - an exchange you sometimes find yourself in the middle of, where conspiracy theorists and Trumpist wingnuts launch into impassioned debates around you, while you sit there, grateful there's at least something in your mentions for once.

Ordinary email has its equivalent to the Twitter canoe: the to-all chain, to which you can reply-all, which is punctuated by thx, Millennials outraging their elder colleagues by addressing them as @andy and the whole dismal experience snowballing when participants begin to throw unsuspecting co-workers into the canoe — and under the bus — without warning.

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Sent: 1 January 2017

From: Kaye (Operations)

To: Already large distribution (irritated)

CC: Already large distribution (exasperated because it wasn't even relevant to them in the first place); Bob; Chip; Chuck;

Re: RE: Re: RE: Anwort: Re: Re: Interminable rambling chain that dates back to 2010

Adding Chip, Bob and Chuck.

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How — just how — will adding Chip, Bob and Chuck to this tedious diatribe make things better, for them, for you, or for any of the legions of other poor saps stuck in this purgatorial conversation with you?

See also

• Reply-all
• Thx

A rhetorical question to which there is no good answer.