There is no easy way to let him down. Simply tell him you're putting his email on your spam filter cuz that's all he sends you. If he says he'll take you off the sh!t email list, you take him off the spam list, simple as that.

Dear X, Hey, would you mind taking me off your forward list? The thing is that I don't really have time to read a lot of mail, so those forwards usually just automatically get archived, and I never look at them... and I'm afraid that someday I'll miss a personal message from you this way.

my uncle sends me religious/inspirational forwards all the time. one or two a day, so it wasn't the volume you're dealing with. but it was really getting on my nerves, so I asked him if he could just start including his own thoughts with the forwarded material.

I still get the 'spam' but now usually I get a note explaining my uncle's thoughts in passing it on as well.

Create a filter in Gmail that forwards the messages back to him, then deletes them. Maybe if he sees the volume from a receiver's point of view, he will see how annoying it can be? Don't hold your breath though - there is every chance that he will start forwarding those messages to you as well, setting in place a recursive loop that will eventually consume the universe.

You could ask him to filter all the forwards and only send you one a day if he absolutely must.

Or you could start replying to his email forwards, each and every one of them. Maybe get a web novel and start pasting a page in at a time? Or just keep replying to each email with this easy cut and paste "I don't get it," again and again and again.

I told my mother the following:

Mom, it's very thoughtful of you to forward on emails you think I'll enjoy. I feel I should explain something about the way I use email: Since I'm online most of the day for work, I have a sound that alerts me when an email comes in. I don't get much junk mail (thank you Gmail spam filters), so I always assume it's a personal email and stop whatever I'm doing to read the latest incoming message. If I find that the message is an old email that someone is forwarding to 27 people, it's always kind of jarring, and when repeated it can actually be very annoying.

I know that you are just trying to share something you liked, and I appreciate it, but would you mind taking me off the list of people you forward email to? Oh, and my wife feels the same way. Thank you!

Love,
Your Son

You could start sending this back for each unwanted email you get.

Heh, a form letter requesting only thoughtful, one-on-one communication.

I already deleted his emails (when I counted them all up and got annoyed), so I'm not going to forward them back to him. I think responding to each one would probably make him happy!

I like taz's and agro's suggestions -- the direct approach is good. A gmail filter is good too, minus the forwarding back to him, provided that he's not someone you have a lot of personal communication with.

Honestly, my approach has always been fairly passive aggressive. The first time this happened to me, back in the 90s when (older) people (like my parents and relatives) were really first starting to buy computers, my aunts added me to the big family email list. I would get 35+ messages from distant relatives a day. And many of them were large .exe greeting cards. (The rest were one-line responses to conversations that I didn't follow, and they went something like "Yeah, but the truck was red.")

I finally just changed my address and only gave it out to people I really wanted to have it. I told my immediate family NEVER to give my address out, under pain of death.

Anyway, I know things are different now. All this was to say, I went to the trouble to change my address, and that's not the best route.

Follow taz/agro's advice.

And DON'T respond to the myriad of emails (unless you want to tell him what's stupid about each one of them). That will only encourage him.

Well, this may not be tactful but I had two aunts that were guilty of this and at Thanksgiving a couple years ago I told them to knock that shit off. They both did. haha.

I have an acquaintance who does this too, using Incredimail, which is Incredifuckingannoying. I preview all the mail in Mailwasher and delete hers (along with the from the server before downloading it.

At least she knows how to BCC. It's the ones who don't who really piss me off because that's how I end up with spam from the likes of Dangerous P. Decrepitude trying to sell me vIAgGGra.

taz wins!

Yup. I think taz has the best one. Agro's is good too, but I like taz's bestest.

Worst is when you get sent a picture of someone's baby (fair enough so far), but then have to live with over-exuberant friends using "Forward All" to return numerous "Aww isn't s/he cute." messages to everyone in the list.

On occasion I have used forward all in this situation to say "Stop having your cutesy fucking baby conversations in my inbox. I get it already, you're a good friend to babies mother/father and you're a nice person. Now stop publically going on about it, show some decorum and use the Forward button instead of Forward All.

You God Damned idiots"

This is usually followed by an email from the mother/father saying "Don't mind Sean, he just gets cranky if you send him communal emails."

taz is our very own ms netiquette!

Another vote for the taz/agro approach. I've had to do the same with a couple nieces. I told them I'd love to hear about them, but I've seen most of the forwarded crap a bazillion times. It doesn't happen much anymore.