The favour sent to everyone

The message usually comes from a name half remembered. Someone from a course years ago, perhaps. It opens with the reader's first name, spelled right, and then asks them to share a new page, vote for an entry, and pass it on to anyone who might be interested.

It is easy to tell it was not written to them. The same words, in the same order, have gone to everyone who was ever in a list with them. The line at the end says there is no pressure at all.

A real favour is a small, brave thing. One person decides that another might help, and asks, knowing a no is possible and that the asking itself costs something. When the yes comes, both people are a little more connected than before.

The mass ask flips all of that. The sender can be relaxed about most people saying no, because nobody in particular was being asked. The cost has not disappeared. It has been moved onto the people receiving it, and onto the thin thread that connected them to the sender, which is now a little thinner.

And there is a cost to people who are not in the conversation at all. The next person who writes to those same people, with care, about one specific thing they need, will be read by someone who has learned to scroll past.

If the message were honest, its first line would say that it is being sent in bulk because there was no time, or no plan, or no relationship to draw on. Nobody writes that line. Everybody reads it anyway.

Being able to reach hundreds of people quickly does not mean you should ask hundreds of people for anything.

A favour that costs the asker nothing is not really a favour.