Anonymous wrote:If you are angry, you can try sending some youtube or tic tok garbage back to your relative or loved one. You, in particular, may find this satisfying. Then you can go about your business, cut your lawn or whatever and know …

you have made it right. The world in balance.

They probably would enjoy receiving them. Exchanging memes is one way for them to socialize with friends and family. I'd send a few funny ones to make them laugh because those are my favorites.

Anonymous wrote:OP here - I didn't mean to come across as grumpy as I did in my post but this annoying habit of my relatives really frustrates me! They *are* all older relatives and in my culture it's completely disrespectful to ask elders to stop and I don't want to hurt their feelings. I can't block them because on occasion they need to share something important. Thanks for the responses. I'll keep trying to hang in there

Is it e-mail? Set up a rule so it automatically goes into a folder. Then once a week do a quick check for anything important and delete the rest.

Anonymous wrote:

OMG, I love you so much.

OP - just look at your post. You are exhausting. Noone is trying to kill you with memes; they are likely doing it to show you (in their annoying way) that they care about you? I personally hate that stuff too, but is it really so hard to delete them? I have one or two people like this in my life, and I roll my eyes, delete, repeat. If I can muster some sort of response, I will do so - to also show them that I care about them (if this is the case).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here - I didn't mean to come across as grumpy as I did in my post but this annoying habit of my relatives really frustrates me! They *are* all older relatives and in my culture it's completely disrespectful to ask elders to stop and I don't want to hurt their feelings. I can't block them because on occasion they need to share something important. Thanks for the responses. I'll keep trying to hang in there

What a nice response, OP. You’re obviously a caring and thoughtful person with a sense of humor.

💙

Anonymous wrote:I was in a Bible group that did this every day. Some people feel like if they express something good that they can ignore their bad feelings. A lot of older people are quite meme. I would take the meme and just understand it's their way of trying to tell themselves they are a good person and life is worth living. The alternatives are not good.

I've been thinking about this all day. I think you have something here. I've been trying to figure out why my family members do this and why it bothers me so much. My family tends to sweep a lot of painful things under the rug and I could see how they use these memes as daily affirmations of how they want to really feel. I'm expected to also sweep things under the rug and I don't like it but I stay quiet in order to keep the peace. So when these cheerful memes constantly pop up, I think what's happening is I'm reacting to my daily reminder to just be positive, no matter what. I've got to continue working through my reactions while still trying to figure out how to block the messages but thank you for taking the time to share.

I don’t know anyone who does this.

I do have some friends who respond with memes and random avatar saying that look like them. I wonder if they go searching for or make this image just to respond to a text.

Anonymous wrote:OP here - I didn't mean to come across as grumpy as I did in my post but this annoying habit of my relatives really frustrates me! They *are* all older relatives and in my culture it's completely disrespectful to ask elders to stop and I don't want to hurt their feelings. I can't block them because on occasion they need to share something important. Thanks for the responses. I'll keep trying to hang in there

What a nice response, OP. You’re obviously a caring and thoughtful person with a sense of humor.

I should have said bad feelings and bad actions. A lot of people do this to portray an image of themselves and a goal for themselves. It's better than them outwardly talking or acting on their fears.

I was in a Bible group that did this every day. Some people feel like if they express something good that they can ignore their bad feelings. A lot of older people are quite meme. I would take the meme and just understand it's their way of trying to tell themselves they are a good person and life is worth living. The alternatives are not good.

I’m with the mute notifications PP. I did that on a family group chat and with a few individual people. My mom is the only one who notices so I tell her I have a setting on my phone because I have to mute things when I’m at work.

OP here - I didn't mean to come across as grumpy as I did in my post but this annoying habit of my relatives really frustrates me! They *are* all older relatives and in my culture it's completely disrespectful to ask elders to stop and I don't want to hurt their feelings. I can't block them because on occasion they need to share something important. Thanks for the responses. I'll keep trying to hang in there

Several of my mother's older friends and relatives do this. If they were on social media, they'd be sharing there, but they just use email.

Just set up a rule in your email to delete them, either by sender and "has attachment" or by subject words or by who is in the "to" field or whatever will catch most of them. That way you don't have to block them but will never see most of the junk they send.

I have multiple FB friends who post politics memes daily or multiple times a day. I just silence the meme posts for 30 days and the AI pushes them down in my feed.

Not sure there is a solution like that for texts. Sorry. That is awful. Like the chain letters of the past.

If you are angry, you can try sending some youtube or tic tok garbage back to your relative or loved one. You, in particular, may find this satisfying. Then you can go about your business, cut your lawn or whatever and know …

you have made it right. The world in balance.

Anonymous wrote:

Once upon a time, these people sent newspaper clippings- articles they thought you’d like, cartoons from the New Yorker, whatever. Now the internet has done its thing. I have a few people in my life who do this. I ignore most of them, react once or twice a week and just delete them. It’s not malicious, and it’s not worth being so upset. We have enough problems in the world. Just let it go.