This guide - "Mailing List Mayhem" - is from the "Addictive Stigmata" page and is used with kind permission.

NOTES: Handy-dandy guide born out of moment of extreme frustration and sleeplessness.

1. In most cases, pretending to be mentally ill is not amusing, and others on the list will not find your ravings charmingly eccentric. An example of this:

"Ive been talking to my invisiiible frieends they are called Percy,Balthaza and balzac. HAHAHA!! Isn;t that funiy you'll be tinking! because i'm soooo crazxy!!!! Evryone says so!!!!! Isnt that kewl!!!"

2. Spelling 'cool' as 'kewl', using random capitalisation in your nick (eg. 'RaSpUtiN'), and using CAPITAL LETTERS and multiple exclamation marks!!!!!! in messages; are all warning signs that you are either a) an idiot, b) a newbie, c) both, and will not endear you to anyone. Neither will claiming to be 24, when your writing style declares you to be 12. 

3. The people on the list are complete strangers. Do you often whine to complete strangers about your woeful life? Don't. Nobody onlist is interested that your 14-year old boyfriend dumped you, or that your teacher is a big meanie, or that your life is over because someone turned up to school wearing the same shirt as you.

4. Spelling and grammar are important. People will form an image of you from the way you write. If you write like this:

'i luve ANgle soooooooo much!!!!!! He is sooooooooo kewl!!!!!!!!'

It's more than likely no one will ever read your postings again, dismissing you as a 10 year old weenie on a sugar high. If you write the same sentence like this:

'I love Angel! He is so cool!'

Perhaps one day you might get some reply.

5. OT posts. Some OT posts are interesting, informative and hardly even off the topic. Others are incredibly moronic. NEVER EVER NO MATTER WHAT, post any of the following:

-Chain letters- Anything that has been passed around, anything that has 'send this to however-many people' on the bottom of it, and anything with a 'really kewl' ASCII picture or ski-slope or something equally inane.

-'Magic' questionnaires- Anything with questions, which says 'don't scroll down, you'll spoil it!!' With a stupid 'explanation' of what your answers mean, and a 'make a wish' thing.

-Virus warnings- All hoaxes. No matter how urgent, no matter how many times its been forwarded, even if it says 'tell all your friends!' DON'T. This includes ICQ warnings, AIM warnings and every other type of lame-ass web panic.

-Urban miscellany- Warnings about car-key thieves, dead babies stuffed with cocaine, and all other: 'I can't believe this, it's so terrible, warn all your friends!' letter. THEY ARE NOT TRUE. Go to www.snopes.com and have a look around if you don't believe me. Also, all those 'starving/ paralysed/ paraplegic child' pleas. They are NOT REAL. Do not post them! The 'GAP will send you free clothes/ Microsoft will send you money/ to Disneyland if you send this email to your friends' letters are also not true. Anything remotely like this is off-topic anyway, and should not be sent to lists- unless you're on an urban myth one.

-Friendship URL's- You know the ones. Prevalent on ICQ, occasionally posted by idiots. If you're someone's friend, then bloody well write them privately and tell them so! A webpage with a happy face on it that tells a 100+ member list that you are 'special friends' with all of them, is ignorant, lazy and hork-some.

6. You are entitled to your musical and entertainment preferences, whatever they may be. But generally, assuming that everyone else onlist has the same likes as you is a mistake. Thus, posting about this incredible Britney Spears/N'Sync/some other revolting teen star page you've found, is not a good idea. (Neither is quoting their lyrics all over your fic, but there's no accounting for taste.) By the same token, even if you have exceptional musical taste, posting stuff about the artists you like to a list devoted to something else, is a bad idea.

7. Sig. files. Your signature file should be a couple of lines long. It should have your name, your webpage address if you have one, and maybe a short quote. The absolute maximum for a signature file is around 10 lines. DO NOT have a twenty to one hundred line sig file. It's stupid, and it inflates your short message into 40kb. No one cares if you 'keep' Spike's peroxide, or 'guard' some enormous quote. Nor does anyone care that you belong to fifty clubs, or run 200 lists. Just put your webpage address, and then if readers are inclined, they can go there and read all about your obsessions.

8. Unless you're on a graphics list, DO NOT send pictures or attachments. Attachments royally fuck up some peoples mail systems. Other people don't have fast connections and will be cursing your name as that 5MB collage you made creates a bottleneck in their mail server as it takes 3 hours to download. Others will be pissed because they pay for their mail by the megabyte. Still others will despise your stupidity because their mailbox has a maximum cache of 4MB, and their ISP just deleted all their mail because of you. Onelist now has a capacity to upload files directly to the list cache, and then send an email notifying people who might want to look at said file where to find it. Go to the onelist site and use this marvellous ability if you want to share an image with your list.

9. Joining ten thousand different lists and sending a one paragraph fic or message to all of them, thus ensuring that the 'Send to:' field is longer than the email itself, is not a good thing.

10. And finally: one line messages. If your sole contribution to a thread is 'I agree' or something similar, you have two choices. Either don't post it, or round it out into a decent reply. No one wants to receive their entire 10kb message back with just two words pasted on the bottom. If all you can say is 'me too', then save it!

Okay, still with us? Still not intimidated? Well go for it and join a list. Generally you can't go wrong if you keep this in mind: You are not an exception. 'You are not a beautiful unique snowflake.' Thanks, Mr Durden. You may make some friends, meet some cool people. Whatever the case, if you follow the guide, you're less likely to make enemies. Have fun!