Apathy Sketchpad

When I get an obviously automated email, I tend not to bother reading the copperplate pleasantries attached to its head and tail ends, and skip straight to the important looking bit in the middle. I just got this email from Mircosoft:

Dear Valued Microsoft Customer,

We received a request to remove you from our Microsoft promotional email listandMicrosoft Partner promotional email list. Please confirm that this information is accurate by clicking the “Please process this request” link below. If you believe you have received this email message in error, please click the “Please ignore this request” link below.

Please process this request: http://www.microsoft.com/unsubscribe/confirmation.aspx?lots-of-tedious-get-parameters

Please ignore this request: http://www.microsoft.com/unsubscribe/confirmation.aspx?lots-of-other-equally-tedious-get-parameters

At any time in the future, if you wish to change your preference for how Microsoft contacts you, you can click the “Manage Your Profile” link on the Microsoft.com home page.

Please do not reply to this email as it has been automatically generated.

Thank you,
Microsoft Corporation

So what I saw, thanks to a combination of this technique and Microsoft’s rather opaque and frankly bizarre choice of words, was a short communication that read “Please process this request. Please ignore this request.”

“Please ignore this request“? What kind of an instruction is that?