Thanks Google Mail for Reminding Me I'm Being Ignored

It seems Google Mail has a new feature now.

If someone doesn't reply to your email within a few days, your email will pop up in your mailbox with a little orange message. Sent 2 days ago. Follow up?

I'm not sure if the reminder always comes the second day. This one I received today did, but I think the previous one, I received, came the 3rd day. But I might be remembering incorrectly.

Really, though.

What is the point??!!!

It can be annoying enough when someone doesn't reply to an email. Do we need Google rubbing it in our faces?

I didn't have a huge emotional investment in the emails I sent, but what if I did? How would that make me feel?

On the other side of that story, might this encourage stalker behavior?

What if there could be hope for the stalker? What if they could manage to maybe let go and move on?  Google might greatly reduce the chances of that happening.

The only people I can see who might benefit from this reminder are extremely busy people who have done an excessive level of networking. They might send an email out and completely forget that they've sent it.

I just Googled to get some insight and am seeing that this feature appeared last year for some users.  I guess it was in beta mode then.

I guess for some reason they see it as a good thing.

Maybe most people are more popular, busy, and absent-minded then me.

I also see that some people get reminders that they should reply to an email.

As someone who often doesn't get replies to her emails, I appreciate this one a bit more. BUT there is the fact that sometimes people don't reply, NOT because they're busy or have forgotten. They simply might not want to talk to us anymore. They might want the relationship to end.

Is it fair for Google to interfere with that?

But anyway, the good news is, this article says you can turn it off. I'm going to try to do that now.

All right. I did it.

I hesitated turning off the reminder-to-reply nudge, because I can maybe occasionally get absent-minded and forget to answer an email.  But usually I don't. I write back soon or when I'm ready.

Sometimes I might procrastinate a bit.

If I fail to write back at all, this is probably deliberate. This is called, I'm choosing to avoid diving deeper into a conflict.  Or...I'm not going to validate your stupidity with a response.