The Internet and free e-mail are turning half the people I know into junk mailers.

Instead of trying to sell me hair-growing formulas or an opportunity to earn big bucks collecting debts online, they share their innermost thoughts at great length.

I've learned this from all the sharing: Most people have boring innermost thoughts.

Things were better before free e-mail. I suffered through the occasional Christmas letter, but mostly people avoided broadcasting their thoughts to a few hundred of their closest friends.

Ordinary people didn't send out hundreds of letters offering their views on politics and religion or the new family pet. Nor did they send a daily collection of jokes. That's because they sensed that this stuff wasn't worth the few bucks it would have cost for a mailing.

Guess what: They were right.

That's why I'm nostalgic for the days when the postman delivered all the mail. Now that most people have the ability to send multiple e-mails for free at the click of a button, I am flooded --- both at home and at work --- with these e-mails.

I get them from people I love, people I like, people I don't like --- it's very democratic. Just this morning on my work e-mail I got three of those long-winded and impersonal e-mails. I'm resigned to being spammed by merchants, but now my friends have joined in and I'm getting a little discouraged.

E-mail has changed the world in a lot of good ways. Every survey I've seen says e-mail is still the most common use of the Internet.

But between con artists, pushy merchants and now these mass mailings from ordinary folks, e-mail is taking a big hit, and it's too important to be ruined.

How can you avoid adding to the mess?

For starters, be cautious about sending any personal e-mail to a work address. Businesses pay for their e-mail service. If other e-mail systems are like the one I use at work, the added volume of personal e-mail can strain them to the point of breaking.

So check to make sure it's OK before routinely sending personal e-mail to a work address. And when it comes to "personal" mass mailings to work addresses, just forget it. It's rude. It may be free for you, but you're adding cost to the business.

That brings us to the folks who send mass mailings to personal e-mail addresses: My suggestion is to ask permission before adding someone to your list.

Even then I'm leery. After all, there are people in the world who are too polite to tell you they'd rather not be on the list. I handle that by telling people --- quite truthfully --- that I love to get personal e-mail but not mass mailings.

I realize many of you will continue to send mass mailings anyway.

If you're one of them, do me a favor and enter the addresses using the BCC feature of your e-mail program. Otherwise, you're sharing the addresses of everyone on the list. Many people would prefer to keep addresses private. BCC, by the way, is a term dating back to typewriter days and means "blind carbon copy."

Avoid adding pictures and attachments. They take up bandwidth, and many people are scared to death of attachments because they can contain viruses.

Speaking of viruses, a lot of the mass mailings I receive are intended to warn me of some new super-virus. In almost every case, the virus is a hoax. So think twice before deciding to forward an e-mail about viruses.

Please don't forward any e-mail that makes claims you can't vouch for personally.

I realize many of you will continue sending out mass mailings. I'll even concede there may be scattered groups of humans who actually want to get them.

If that's the case, consider starting a blog or Web page about the topic. Then people who want to be kept in the loop can simply go to the blog or page to see the latest. The folks who go find your material will be more motivated than those who are force-fed.

Feel free to let me know what you think. Just don't do it in a mass mailing.

Seeking 'gray gamers'

If you are 40 or older in metro Atlanta and play video games with a passion, I'd like to hear from you. Please e-mail bhusted@ajc.com and tell me about the games you play and how your family and friends feel about it. Also include your full name and a daytime telephone number.

tecbud@ajc.com