I'm not the biggest fan of mass texts, but on the other hand, if you're left out of a mass text what does that say? You're not good enough to even text when it's going to a large group of people? It's a double-edged sword and everyone has a different opinion about it.
That's why I was a little bit nervous when I needed to send out a mass email. I had gotten so many replies from my Craig's List posting that I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed. I had been able to respond to the first few emails personally, but more and more just kept coming in. So many people had different questions and wondered when they could come see the place. I'm graduating in 2.5 weeks and am already so overwhelmed with schoolwork I wondered how I was going to fit showings in to 30 different people as well. I scheduled 3 showings, all with friends of friends so I didn't have to worry about sketchy Craig's List people/strangers. I started thinking, what happens if the first person who comes decides they want it on the spot and I've already scheduled showings with these 30 other people and now I have to go back and cancel them all? I decided my best option would be to send out a mass email answering everyone question that had been asked. I also explained my process for scheduling showings. They would need to send an email back saying they were still interested and I would schedule showings in the order they came in, if they first few people before them hadn't decided they wanted the apartment yet.
I was worried that I was sounding rude and controlling, I made sure I apologized in the email for it being a mass email but that it was in the interest of not wasting their time. After a few hours I received 5 emails back from people saying they were still interested. Some even said they appreciated just getting a response even if it was a mass. If they emailed me with the "I'm Still Interested!" message, I emailed them back personally and thanked them for their patience and gave them an expected date to hear back from me.
This is an example of the personal shift -- from mass to personal; or rather in my case, from personal to mass back to personal. These people emailed me with a personal message, intended just for me. I emailed them all back at once with a mass message intended for all receipients and was not tailored to any one person. If they responded to the mass email, I emailed yet again but this time going back to personal by addressing their particular questions or concerns individually.
From the Media and Society text, "...a sociological perspective -- what he called the 'sociological imagination' -- enables us to see the connections between 'private troubles' and 'public issues.' Such a perspective suggests that we can understand the condition of the individual only by situating that person in the larger context of society" (pg. 18). The people who did not respond to my mass email may have decided that I was rude and controlling. However, maybe the people who did respond decided they understood my perspective. They understood the larger situation of feeling overwhelmed with a large number of responses and not quite knowing how to handle the situation.
Below is another example of a mass message -- a mass text. Although the successfulness of the following mass message is unknown, it's safe to say mine was probably more well received.
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