The NHS's 1.2M employees are trapped in a 'reply-all' email hell
The advice at the end is pretty important - if you want the thread to die, just ignore it. All told people mostly followed this, and if only 120 replies were sent in an organisation as huge as the NHS then that's pretty incredible. In our company's "social" list the silly reply-all chains have a very predictable pattern, coming in a series of waves:1. original sensible email like "hey guys, I have some honey/walnuts/fruit/spirits from my hometown if anyone wants to try/buy"2. sensible replies start rolling in, but which were accidentally sent to all3. some jokers/trolls send memes in response (also reply all)4. the whining begins, people reply-all asking everyone to stop spamming them5. the memers reply (sometimes with more memes) that it is the optional "social" list that's for this sort of nonserious/fun stuff.6. some helpful problem-solvers weigh in, sending reply-all instructions (often including MS Paint'd diagrams) on how to unsubscribe from the list or apply an outlook filter7. finally the "can everyone just stop replying to this though?" emails start, also reply-all (and apparently oblivious to the contradiction/irony of their own reply-all) and everyone participating starts to realise it should be ignored...Once you recognise the pattern it becomes pretty enjoyable identifying which stage of this month's "Emailgate" you're currently at - the whole thing can around to 45-60 mins to play out.