Please read the following in the voice of the movie preview guy:
In a world in which your every move is tracked by your ever-present mobile device, where you’re not safe from work e-mails, even on the subway, in which even the most simple of elevator rides must be filled with scrolling Instagram pics lest boredom clutch at your throat with grasping claws, sometimes — even the most tech-savvy of social media “ninjas” (ew) — feels the urge to throw up his/her hands and retreat, Walden-like, into the woods.
We get it. When an entire workday can be reduced to answering e-mails and planning your evening becomes one confusing game of text / e-mail / Facebook / message / text, sometimes it becomes tempting to forgo your digital responsibilities.
We’re going to let you off the hook a bit.
Read on for seven instances in which you can cease self-flagellating and give a little shrug accompanied by an “ehhh.”
1. You forget to answer an e-mail
Unless it’s an urgent work e-mail (branded with a little exclamation point in Outlook), the e-mailer in question will likely get over it if you don’t respond RIGHT AWAY. I mean, if it was an emergency, she would probably call you, right?
2. You fail to accept someone’s friendship/follow them back
With Facebook and Twitter’s oft-shifting notifications system, most requests end up in the junk drawer of the Web, anyway.
3. You call someone back without listening to his or her voice message first
Like you have time to listen to Aunt Becky ramble on and on about her dog, Sunshine, and how he keeps humping teeny, tiny dogs at the dog park, thereby terrifying both tiny dog and tiny-dog owner alike.
4. You don’t respond to a text message in which there’s no question
Totally OK, unless that statement is akin to “I need a kidney NOW!”
5. You quietly unfriend someone you don’t really talk to anyway
If they get angry and contact you, you can always whip out that “you don’t really talk to me, anyway” thing.
6. You miss a friend’s event because he invited you on Facebook
Facebook events are the new mass “just keeping you up-to-date on my life!” e-mails that you still receive from distant relatives and old flames: They often go completely unnoticed.
7. You “unsubscribe” from a listserv
Sometimes, friends and exes add us to their mailing lists against our will. And often, we are annoyed by that influx of e-mails — especially if we’re estranged from said friends/exes. Feel completely free to hit “unsubscribe.”
Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz are the sarcastic brains behind humor blog and book “Stuff Hipsters Hate.”
