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We all love the Internet because it can constantly keep us connected to people. We also hate the Internet because it keeps us constantly connected to people. The joys of talking to a long-distance friend can be overshadowed by reply all emails and trolls on social media. Don’t you wish you could silence all of those annoying people?
Well, here a three tips for muting the bothersome people online so you can enjoy your time online.
Quiet the ‘reply all’ madness
Whether it comes from an inconsiderate person at work or a relative that just doesn’t get technology, a reply all email can drive you nutty. There is an easy way to stop reply all emails, though.
In Gmail, open the email conversation and click on the More drop-down menu. Choose Mute from the list and you’re done. Now the conversation is archived and any new messages won’t appear in your inbox. They’ll go straight to the archive unless someone replies directly to you.
In Outlook, select the thread and press Control + Delete. In this case, the thread will be deleted and any new messages in that thread will be immediately deleted instead of bugging you.
Banish people from your feed
There are times when you just don’t want to see another rant from Aunt Jane or Uncle Joe in your feed, but unfriending them seems harsh. In cases when you want to shut someone up without permanently getting rid of them, just mute on Facebook or Twitter.
On Facebook, click on the grey arrow on the top right-hand corner of a post by the person you want to hush and click Unfollow. From this point on, you won’t see any post by the annoying person. Facebook got rid of the option to see who’s following who, so there’s no worries that you’ll hurt anyone’s feelings.
Muting people on Twitter is just as easy. Go to one of the annoying person’s posts and click on the three dots on the bottom right-hand side. A menu will pop up. Click Mute. You will no longer see Tweets from that person in your timeline.
Stop emails from creeps
Unsubscribing from sites and telling people not to email you ever again often doesn’t work. To permanently exile someone from your email box, you need to filter.
Gmail
Click on the arrow in the upper right-hand side > Click Filter messages like these > Click Create filter with this search > Tick the Delete it option box > Click the Create filter option
Now all of the emails from this address will go right into the trash and you’ll never even know they sent you a message.
Apple Mail
Go to Mail Preferences > Rules > Add rule > Name your rule > Click Condition > Choose Name and fill out the name of who you want to filter > Click on the “+” to add another person > Under Perform the following actions option choose Delete message > Click OK > Click Apply and if you have any messages in your inbox from the person and they will be deleted as well.
Just like in Gmail, all of these messages will bypass your inbox and will be deleted.
Outlook
Like with Apple Mail, in Outlook you will need to create a rule to filter out unwanted emails. Here are Microsoft’s steps for creating a rule in Outlook.
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